Social Entrepreneurial Intention Formation of Corporate Volunteers

Abstract

The current paper aims to identify the antecedents of social entrepreneurial intention formation. Applying the theory of planned behavior on an international sample of 159 entrepreneurial volunteers in a corporate framework, we find positive relationships between empathy, perceived social norms, self-efficacy, perceived collective efficacy, and social entrepreneurial intentions with mediation by perceived desirability and perceived feasibility. Overall, we contribute to the upcoming domain of social entrepreneurship research by investigating the individual and environmental antecedents of social entrepreneurial action in a corporate setting.

Key Words:

• Social entrepreneurship
• corporate volunteering
• intention formation
• theory of planned behavior

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to sincerely thank the journal reviewers for their helpful comments as well as the session participants for thoughtful questions at the G-Forum – 16th Annual Interdisciplinary Entrepreneurship Conference in Potsdam, Germany, as well as at the European Academy of Management (EURAM) in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, where an earlier version of this paper was presented. In addition, the authors are thankful for the fruitful cooperation of Deutsche Post DHL and its Disaster Response Teams (above all, Chris Weeks and Susanne Meier) in conducting the survey reported in this paper.