Cultural leadership ideals and social entrepreneurship: an international study

Abstract

Country-level contexts can be important drivers that explain cross-national differences in individuals’ social entrepreneurship decisions. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the understanding of favourable cultural contexts that influence individuals to pursue social entrepreneurship. Our findings confirmed that cross-national social entrepreneurship differences can be explained in part by considering cultural leadership ideals at the country-level. Specifically, the country context of low self-protective cultural leadership ideal had a positive impact on individual decisions to pursue social entrepreneurship. The results provide a theoretical and practical basis to understand the influence of the contextual factor on social entrepreneurship.