Service Learning in Social Entrepreneurship Education: Why Students Want to Become Social Entrepreneurs and How to Address Their Motives

Susan Mueller (), Taiga Brahm () and Heidi Neck ()
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Susan Mueller: University of St. Gallen, Swiss Research Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, Dufourstrasse 40a, 9000 St. Gallen, Switzerland
Taiga Brahm: University of St. Gallen, Institute of Business Education and Educational Management, Dufourstrasse 40a, 9000 St. Gallen, Switzerland
Heidi Neck: Babson College Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship, Babson Park, MA 02457-0310, USA

Journal of Enterprising Culture (JEC), 2015, vol. 23, issue 03, 357-380

Abstract: Service learning has been identified as a suitable approach to teach social entrepreneurship. However, in order to design service learning in an appropriate way, it is necessary to better understand why students want to become a social entrepreneur as opposed to a traditional entrepreneur. Thus, this study aims at identifying distinct student motives for preferring social entrepreneurship. According to our research, reasons typically mentioned by students who prefer a social entrepreneurship career over a commercial entrepreneurship career belonged to the following categories: impact, personal motives, and considering social and economic aspects. From this understanding, we derive recommendations for the design of service learning in social entrepreneurship programs. We hope that these recommendations will contribute to a student-oriented design of service learning that incorporates students’ own motives.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; social entrepreneurship; social business; motivation; service learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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DOI: 10.1142/S0218495815500120

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