Attitude Toward Social Enterprises: A Comparison between For-Profit and Social Enterprise Employees

Eunsoo Choi, Eunji Kim, Inji Kim and Incheol Choi
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Eunsoo Choi: Department of Psychology, Korea University, Seoul 02841, Korea
Eunji Kim: Department of Psychology, Korea University, Seoul 02841, Korea
Inji Kim: Pluscope, Seoul 10881, Korea
Incheol Choi: Department of Psychology, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Korea

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 7, 1-10

Abstract: Social enterprises, organizations that pursue social purposes while generating profits, have garnered attention recently as potential key players for a sustainable economy. However, research on the perception of social enterprises by lay people has been ignored even though positive reception of social enterprises is an important condition for their sustainability. In the present study, we compared for-profit enterprise employees ( n = 200) and social enterprise employees ( n = 162) and examined their differences in attitude toward the profit-making aspects of social enterprises as well as the employees working for social enterprises. The results showed that for-profit enterprises overestimated that social enterprise employees were extrinsically motivated and underestimated their prosocial intentions. In addition, for-profit enterprise employees were less favorable toward the profit-making aspects of social enterprises, including payment of high salaries for the social enterprise employees and using donations to run social enterprises. Interestingly, the difference between for-profit and social enterprise employees in their attitude toward the profit-making aspects of social enterprises was explained by lay theories of altruism called “pure altruism.” The present research makes important contributions by identifying the psychological mechanisms that underlie individuals’ perceptions and attitude toward social enterprises.

Keywords: social enterprise; lay theory; altruism; prosocial motivation; extrinsic motivation; profit-making (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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