THE MOTIVATION STRUCTURE OF SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS AND ITS ANALYSIS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF SELFDETERMINATION THEORY

Abstract

In spite of the increasing research attention on social entrepreneurs, there is a lack of empirical studies investigating their motivations. Moreover, in ex-socialist countries, like Hungary, the foundation and acceptance of social enterprises are in a few decades delay in relation to Western Europe, which increases the need of related research in the region. The aim of the present qualitative study was to explore social entrepreneurs’ motivation and to investigate to what extent this motivational structure is autonomous. To reach these goals the researchers applied semi-structured personal deep interviews with open coding and analysis method. The identified motivational structure includes 19 motivational subcategories grouped into 5 main categories: social motivations; entrepreneurial motivations; personal motivations; environmental motivations; and governmental incentives. According to the results, for someone to become a social entrepreneur, the coexistence of at least three motivational main categories (entrepreneurial, social, and personal) seem to be necessary, while the other two main motivational categories (governmental incentives and environmental motivations) are only supportive ones. The research also found that the motivation of social entrepreneurs is dominantly autonomous. Controlled motivations are only significantly presented in two main motivational categories (personal motivations and governmental incentives).