Defining the 'Social' in 'Social Entrepreneurship': Altruism and Entrepreneurship

• Main Authors: TAN, Wee Liang, WILLIAMS, John N., TAN, Teck Meng
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2005
• Subjects: social entrepreneurship; definitions; taxonomy; altruism; Entrepreneurial and Small Business Operations; Strategic Management Policy
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/1380; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/lkcsb_research/article/2379/viewcontent/auto_convert.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

What is social entrepreneurship? In, particular, what’s so social about it? Understanding what social entrepreneurship is enables researchers to study the phenomenon and policy-makers to design measures to encourage it. However, such an understanding is lacking partly because there is no universally accepted definition of entrepreneurship as yet. In this paper, we suggest a definition of social entrepreneurship that intuitively accords with what is generally accepted as entrepreneurship and that captures the way in which entrepreneurship may be altruistic. Based on this we provide a taxonomy of social entrepreneurship and identify a number of real cases from Asia illustrating the different forms it could take.