Motivational factors for social entrepreneurship: the case of Romania

Social entrepreneurship research has tended to borrow much from research into commercial entrepreneurship. However, social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship in the commercial world are different in many respects, including individuals’ motivations for pursuing social entrepreneurship, rather than commercial entrepreneurship. Little appears to be known about individuals’ motivations to pursue social entrepreneurship, especially in developing economies, such as Romania, where social entrepreneurship is at an early stage of evolution. Thus, this research analyses individuals’ intentions to pursue social venture creation from the perspective of four schools of thought: the economic, sociological, psychological and management schools. A number of drivers of individuals’ intentions to pursue social entrepreneurship have emerged from these four schools, including intrinsic motivation (intangible rewards, such as recognition and reputation), extrinsic motivation (material rewards, such as profit, wages or any compensation of a material nature) and complex motivation (common motivations, such as working from home, balancing family and work time, work time allocation, being one’s own boss, time allocation for self, being in control, being in charge, reputation, recognition and being a role model), alongside employment status and start-up capital. Few studies to date have examined this combination of motivational variables for social entrepreneurship, especially in a developing economy setting. This study adopted a quantitative methodology. Six hypotheses were developed from the literature, which linked five independent variables - intrinsic, extrinsic and complex motivations, as well as employment status and start-up capital—to the dependent variable, the intention for social entrepreneurship. Data were collected either face to face or by telephone from 143 Romanian social entrepreneurs, using a detailed survey questionnaire developed for the purpose. A three-step hierarchical multiple regression (HMR) was used to analyse the data, alongside correlation analysis. Data analysis confirmed that intention for social entrepreneurship was related to extrinsic, intrinsic and complex motivations, although this relationship depended on the HMR model composition. In HMR Step 1, both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation were significant dependent variable drivers when they were the only independent variables in the model, yet became non-significant with the inclusion of complex motivation in Step 2, while complex motivation had a significant positive influence on the dependent variable. Further, HMR Step 3 indicated that employment status and the existence of start-up capital both had a positive influence on the dependent variable. Finally, the correlation analysis found that extrinsic motivation had a significant inverse relationship with intrinsic motivation. In sum, all six hypotheses were supported. This research enriches social entrepreneurship motivation theory by suggesting that whichever entrepreneurial path is chosen (commercial or social), extrinsic and intrinsic motivations apply, yet appear to have different weightings in stimulating intentions to pursue entrepreneurship, as well as being inversely related. This research also adds to the social entrepreneurship motivation theory by offering the new typology of complex motivation to pursue social entrepreneurship and empirically explore its effects. In addition to its positive influence, this research indicates that complex motivation’s presence in the HMR model results in extrinsic and intrinsic motivation becoming non-significant.