Brigitte Hoogendoorn

A Quantitative Comparison of Social and Commercial Entrepreneurship: Toward a More Nuanced Understanding of Social Entrepreneurship Organizations in Context

Abstract This study empirically addresses the differences between social and commercial entrepreneurship by using the largest available quantitative data source, namely the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2009 survey on social entrepreneurship in Belgium and The Netherlands. We use a combination of exploratory statistical analyses and qualitative techniques to generate propositions on the organizations and initiatives that social entrepreneurs are involved in and contrast them with our understanding of commercial entrepreneurs. This study contributes to answer the call for more quantitative research and simultaneously argues that, despite the potential contribution of large-scale data, the validity and reliability of measurement instruments cannot be seen independently from their particular context. With this important observation in mind, our findings indicate a predominance of younger social organizations or initiatives that rely to a great extent on government funding, whereas earned income is limited. Furthermore, social entrepreneurs show less ambition in terms of employment growth and progression to more mature stages of the entrepreneurial process compared with commercial entrepreneurs.

The Prevalence and Determinants of Social Entrepreneurship at the Macro Level

The present cross‐national study aims to explore the factors that are associated with a countrys share of social start‐ups in the total number of start‐ups and contributes to the emerging stream of literature that explores the contextual drivers of different types of entrepreneurship. Based on data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2009, covering 49 countries, we test several theoretical perspectives, including the failure thesis/institutional void perspective, the interdependence theory/institutional support perspective, welfare state theory and supply‐side theory. Multiple regression analyses are applied testing the influence of institutional factors and cultural values on the incidence of social entrepreneurial start‐ups relative to other types of start‐ups. Our results seem to support the institutional support perspective: the share of social start‐ups in all start‐ups seems to benefit from favorable institutional circumstances, in particular public sector expenditure and regulatory quality. With respect to cultural values, our results suggest that a societys level of self‐expression values benefits start‐up diversity in favor of a higher share of social start‐ups.

Belonging, believing, bonding, and behaving: the relationship between religion and business ownership at the country level

This cross-country study adopts a competing theories approach in which both a value perspective and a social capital perspective are used to understand the relation between religion and a country’s business ownership rate. We distinguish among four dimensions of religion: belonging to a religious denomination, believing certain religious propositions, bonding to religious practices, and behaving in a religious manner. An empirical analysis of data from 30 OECD countries with multiple data points per country covering the period 1984–2010 suggests a positive relationship between religion and business ownership based on those dimensions that reflect the internal aspects of religiosity (i.e., believing and behaving). We do not observe a significant association for those dimensions that reflect more external aspects of religion (i.e., belonging and bonding). These results suggest that the social capital perspective prevails the value perspective, at least when internal aspects of religiosity are concerned. More generally, our study demonstrates the importance of distinguishing between different dimensions of religion when investigating the link between religion and entrepreneurship.