Altruism and Entrepreneurship: Partners in Social Entrepreneurship

• Main Authors: TAN, Wee Liang, WILLIAMS, John N., TAN, Teck Meng
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2006
• Subjects: Asian Studies; Work, Economy and Organizations
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/949
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Social entrepreneurship has recently captured the imagination of researchers and policy-makers. It promises an altruistic form of capitalism that connects enterprise with benevolence. Unfortunately there is no generally accepted definition of it, partly because there is no consensus on the definition of entrepreneurship either. Without a definition of social entrepreneurship it is impossible to research or develop policy measures for it. We propose a plausible definition that captures the way in which it may be altruistic and provide taxonomy of forms of it illustrated by Asian cases.