A Study on Social Entrepreneurial Attitudes Towards Start-Up Intention in Malaysia

Abstract

Social entrepreneurship is a contemporary phenomenon of the socioeconomic and sustainable development in Malaysia. The main motives of social entrepreneurship are social welfare and value creation through the display of innovativeness, leadership, and risk management of the business. Meanwhile, social entrepreneurial attitude (SEA) as an individual or group who is willing to take risks and put the effort forth to create the positive changes in society through their innovative idea that will have the potential to solve a community problem and achieving the business sustainability. The aim of this study is to identify the factors influencing the social entrepreneurial attitudes towards start-up intention. It illustrates the context-specific nature of the phenomenon and factors for fostering the social entrepreneurial attitude as a positive force for social and economic development. Several important factors, which contribute to the success of the social entrepreneurship, are motivation, government support, passion, networking, belief and social value. The findings of the present empirical study reveal that personal attributes such as motivation, belief and passion are main factors for SEA towards start-up intention whilst the rest play the role of more complementary attributes towards the intention. Further, the results enlighten that Malaysian entrepreneurs in Northern Region are prone to become social entrepreneurs if the three attributes present within themselves.

Keywords: Social Entrepreneurial AttitudeInnovationStart-up Intentionsocial entrepreneurshipSustainabilityNorthern Region Malaysia

Introduction

Over the decades the world has experienced a lot of global issues pertaining to social and environmental problems that governments have to encounter day to day. Be it from poverty or other social distress problems that lead to increasing number of crime rates, pollutions and climate changes. This is not only happened in developing nations but also developed nations. Due to this situation, social entrepreneurship has become one of the most practical approach in recent years in helping governments to solve the social issues especially in poverty and environment. However, there is still limited social entrepreneurship in Malaysia. Malaysia has the lowest score in the prevalence of social entrepreneurship early stage activity in South East Asia (Lepoutre, Justo, Terjesen, & Bosma, 2013) and thus, this study is interested to investigate the factors influencing social entrepreneurship start-up intention among business owners in Malaysia. The results might serve as useful insights to government on how to motivate existing business owners or young adults to start-up a social business or social entrepreneurship in Malaysia.

Social entrepreneurs can be interpreted as the combination of entrepreneurial skills and business principles that manage a sustainable venture to achieve social goals through the alliances with change agents to scale up the impact of their social innovation (Dees, 2001; Mair & Marti, 2006). They provide an avenue for solution to a social, economic and environmental issue with a sustainable business model in various field which includes education, health, environment, and microfinance. The three most successful cases of social entrepreneurship around the globe are the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, the Aravind Eye Hospital in India and Sekem in Egypt—reveals a common feature: all three creatively combine resources that often they themselves do not possess to address a social problem and thereby alter existing social structures (Mair & Marti, 2006).

Problem Statement

Despite many efforts done by the governments, the marginalised group still exist everywhere in the country whether in the city or rural areas. Their needs range from clean water, electricity, health, education, food, jobs, transportation and shelther which are the basic needs of human living. Therefore, many ways have been debated to alleviate poverty level around the globe. It was quoted in the book by Professor Muhammad Yunus (Yunus, 2017, p.5): “In January 2017, Oxfam announced that the ultraprivileged group that owns wealth exceeding that of the bottom half of the world’s population has shrunk to just eight people – even as the number of people in the bottom half has grown to about 3.6 billion.” Thus, social entrepreneurs are required to help to alleviate the poverty level and income gap on top of government efforts.

Due to the significant contribution of social entrepreneurship, past literature has identified that social entrepreneurs has very special traits such as strong ethical fiber (Drayton, 2002), special leadership skills (Thompson, Alvy, & Lees, 2000), a strong passion to realize their vision (Bornstein, 1998) and agreeableness, openness and conscientiousness (Nga & Shamuganathan, 2010). However, there is still limited studies assess the antecedents and consequences of social entrepreneurship in Malaysia. The government of Malaysia has developed national blueprint through Malaysia Social Enterprise Blueprint 2015 to 2018. The mission is to achieve 700 social entrepreneurs who will be active and self-sustain, people centric and impact driven to the Malaysian community. Therefore, it is imperative for us to understand the factors that can help to motivate and influence the start-up of social entrepreneurship in Malaysia. Based on past studies, the study has selected six independent variables that are social value, government support, networking, passion, belief and motivation to examine their relationship with intention to start-up social entrepreneurship in Malaysia.

Research Questions

Based on the problem statement and research objectives, the study attempts to address the following research questions:

• Which factor influence the social entrepreneurship start-up intention?

• Which factor has the most influence on social entrepreneurship start-up intention?

• Which factor has negative influence on social entrepreneurship start-up intention?

Purpose of the Study

As social entrepreneurship has been increasingly contributing to the growth and development of the Malaysian economy and to the social community, it is essential to understand the underlying factors that ensure successful implementations of this type of venture in Malaysia. The factors identified in this research will be able to contribute to the society by ensuring that social entrepreneursip has a very bright future in Malaysia. This study brings to light the factors that contribute to social entrepreneurship development and the challenges that this person has to face in a day-to-day routine. This study also provide insights into suitable antecedents that motivates these entrepreneurs to become a social entrepreneurs that can transform Malaysia social landscape to be a better ones. Further, the study will add to the literature on factors influencing the intention of social entrepreneurship in Malaysia.

Research Methods

Findings

Discussion and Conclusion

This study aims to find out factors that influence the social entrepreneurship start-up intention in Malaysia and also identify factor that has the most significant influence and negative influence on social entrepreneurship start-up intention. Based on the results, the study notices that motivation is the most significant factor in influencing the social entrepreneurship start-up intention in Malaysia (t = 10.857, p < 0.000). The results is consistent with Solesvik (2013) and Santos (2012), whereby social entrepreneurs are driven by their motivation to create value for society. The second most significant factor is belief (t = 2.818, p < 0.05). Those involve in social entrepreneurship believe that they can contribute towards solving societal problems. As of now, there is still limited studies found on the relationship between belief and social entrepreneurship start-up intention. Among available is Hockerts (2017) but he focused on social entrepreneurial self-efficacy. The third most significant variable is passion (t = 2.770, p < 0.05). Passion has been said to increase entrepreneurs’ dedication, commitment and persistent in pursuing related goals and actions in (Cardon, Wincent, Singh, & Drnovsek, 2009). The study found that passion influences entrepreneurs decision to create social venture enterprise. The next two factors are social value and government support. The results of government support is consistent with past literature (Stephan, Uhlaner, & Stride, 2015; Zahra & Wright, 2011).

In conclusion, social entrepreneurs are committed to serve basic human needs and to facilitate impactful quality of life improvement within society. Social entrepreneurs also promote their mission for social change by supporting the beneficiaries to realize their potential and undertake ownership in improving their quality of life. Many entrepreneurs believe that in order for them to engage in this new business venture, they should have three things in them namely motivation, passion and personal belief. Most of them agree that these three catalysts should be a driving force for them to reach the intention to start-up a social enterprise. There is followed by social value and government support. This study hopes to provide useful insights for government to formulate a strategy to encourage more social entrepreneurship in Malaysia.

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