Stephan van der Merwe, Tshegofatso Manoto
Abstract
Social entrepreneurship has become a popular topic of interest across the world. Social enterprises are different from traditional enterprises because they can create products and services to benefit society and create opportunities for the less fortunate. However, social entrepreneurship in South Africa is still in its infancy by scope, support, and size. In a country facing chronic unemployment, short of skills and education, and a mixed economy, the study presents a perspective on social entrepreneurship as a process that catalyses social change and satisfies crucial social needs in a way that is not dominated by the entrepreneurs’ immediate financial gains.
Social entrepreneurship is distinguished form other forms of entrepreneurship by the relative importance of increasing social value and development above obtaining economic gain. The authors offer the idea of embeddedness as a nexus between theoretical viewpoints for studying social entrepreneurship to drive future research. The study pursued a qualitative research method with a descriptive research strategy.