Predictors of Social Entrepreneurship Success: A Cross-national Analysis of Antecedent Factors

Even though the practice of social entrepreneurship has a long history, the field has only begun to gain academic attention in the past few decades. However, most of the literature to date focuses on theoretical and conceptual issues, and there continues to be a paucity of empirical work in this discipline. Using the number of social entrepreneurs in a country as a proxy for prevalence of the phenomenon is a strong predictor - the validity of the results was confirmed using two reputable databases of social entrepreneurs, i.e., the Ashoka and Schwab Foundations. Furthermore, the components of national-level attitudes for general entrepreneurship, i.e., perceived opportunity, no fear of failing, and aspirations of new technology, were found to be positively correlated with social entrepreneurship at the country level. Yet, national-level attitudes for networking and opportunities for start-ups, generally correlated with general entrepreneurship, were negatively correlated with social entrepreneurship. We also discuss the implications of our findings and discuss their consequences as well as suggestions for future research.