A typology of social entrepreneuring models continued : empirical evidence from South Africa

Abstract

There have been calls in social entrepreneurship research to move beyond conceptual arguments and to ground definitions and conceptualizations of this field in empirical research, especially pertaining to the developing world. Owing to the socially embedded nature of social enterprises, the context in which social enterprises originate is a key determinant of their modus operandi. In South Africa, a context fraught with social ills, the lack of clarity on the nature and form of social enterprises constrains research and policy formulation. Using a survey methodology, we collected data from a sample of 453 social enterprises on domains of social entrepreneuring identified in previous studies and performed a cluster analysis to identify different types of social entrepreneuring models. The findings point to the existence of two main types of social entrepreneuring models in South Africa: beneficiary-centric entrepreneurial nonprofits and customer-centric social businesses. This paper contributes a more contextual understanding of social entrepreneuring models in South Africa. By showing that social enterprises in South Africa are partly unique to their context, this paper underscores the theoretical and empirical importance of the context in which social enterprises originate and operate when testing the universal validity of social entrepreneuring models.