Charity/commercialism : competing or complementary motivations in Singapore social business enterprises?

• Main Author: Lim, Pearlyn
• Other Authors: Ian McGonigle
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Social sciences::Sociology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/78728
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

In recent years, Social Business Enterprises (SBEs) have gained scholarly attention for their innovative way of meeting social challenges through commercialised businesses. More importantly, they act as a microcosm of Singapore's society in depicting the tensions between individualistic and collective interests. Pre-interview findings have confirmed that conflicting interests exist between profit-making and social impact in SBEs. Thus, this paper seeks to find out whether charity and commercial interests come together as competing or complementary motivations in Singapore SBEs. It has found that there is a fundamental clash of interests between commercial gain and charitable good, and the challenge for SBE owners is often to reconcile these two agendas and uphold them simultaneously. Consequently, SBE owners refer to the concept of balancing commercial and charitable interests to resolve this challenge. This paper ultimately concludes that commercial and charity interests can work together and form complementary rather than competing motivations for SBEs.