Psychosocial Characterization of Social Entrepreneurs: A Comparative Study

Social entrepreneurship is a topic of growing interest that demands empirical studies on different aspects. This is an exploratory study aimed at identifying a distinctive psychosocial profile of social entrepreneurs (SE). We conducted a factorial study in which we distinguished social entrepreneurs (SE), volunteers (VOL), philanthropists (PHI), and commercial entrepreneurs (CE) in several psychosocial variables: personal values, entrepreneurship orientation (proactivity, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, risk tendency, and control locus), social motivation, empathy orientation, and career identity. Our working hypothesis was that social entrepreneurs present a particular profile related to values of benevolence and self-direction, high entrepreneurship orientation, ability on taking perspective (empathy), a social motive similar to altruism, and career identity based on service and entrepreneurship. We found evidence to maintain our hypothesis and it was possible to characterize social entrepreneurs. The implications of these findings are discussed in this report.