Altruistic Motivation as Power for Social Entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurship has become one of the vital research areas in the field of entrepreneurship. It reflects the growing importance of these economic actors who address urgent social problems in various fields including education, health, environment and foremost poverty alleviation. Social entrepreneurs provide sustainable solutions for social problems using an entrepreneurial approach. Although they share entrepreneurial thinking and acting with their commercial counterparts, they differ with respect to the value they are going to create. Whereas commercial entrepreneurs aim to create economic value, social entrepreneurs in the first place strive to make substantial contribution to a given social problem. Based on the differences in value proposition, the author argues that commercial and social entrepreneurs differ with respect to motives that drive their entrepreneurial action. In particular, he investigates the role of altruism as a driver of social entrepreneurship. Next to a theoretical analysis, the author also integrates in the thesis the results of the conducted interviews with six social entrepreneurs in Central Europe.