Feeling your pain, pursuing my gain: Assessing status-striving, empathy, and social entrepreneurship intent

Abstract

Prosocial intentions—intentions to engage in any act that benefits others by producing and maintaining their well-being (Aronson et al., 2005; Brief and Motowidlo, 1986)—is a strong predictor of positive, other-oriented action. Prosocial intent has been shown to predict benevolent behavior, such as volunteering and organizational citizenship behaviors (Kamdar et al., 2006; Veludo-de-Oliveira et al., 2015), as well as social entrepreneurship, engaging in commerce and innovation to solve social problems (see Bacq and Janssen, 2011; Saebi et al., 2019, for reviews). In particular, research on social entrepreneurship has examined social entrepreneurship intent—“the intent to pursue a social mission by starting a business or launching a social venture” (Bacq and Alt, 2018: 334)—as a dependent variable of major importance in the field. This research has mostly attempted to explain it from the perspective of prosocial, other-oriented motives, rarely examining self-oriented motives (Bacq et al., 2016; Ruskin et al., 2016). However, recent scholarship has noted that the prosocial, altruistic motivations of social entrepreneurs should not be taken-for-granted (Kimmitt and Muñoz, 2018), as it carries the risk of depicting social entrepreneurs as ethical heroes with good intentions, driven by decency and morality (Bacq et al., 2016; Seelos and Mair, 2005).