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Commercial and Social Entrepreneurs: An Examination of the Influence of Human Values on the Opportunity Identification Process

Messer, Tracey Eira
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1422291015

Abstract Details

2015, Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, Organizational Behavior.
Entrepreneurs historically identify for-profit opportunities across all industries. However, in the 1980s the number of ventures which create social value as well as financial value began to increase. The rise in this nuanced form of entrepreneurship leads to questions about the specific individuals pursuing Social Entrepreneurship rather than Commercial Entrepreneurship. All entrepreneurs go through an opportunity identification process. However, the field has little understanding of what values actually shape an entrepreneurs’ approach to identifying business opportunities. Specifically, the upsurge in social entrepreneurship success suggests that these particular individuals, who are by definition focused on identifying and creating social value through entrepreneurship, likely have a different perspective than commercial entrepreneurs toward how opportunities are identified. Therefore, this study seeks to understand the ventures they wish to pursue, however it is not known whether these processes are similar for both. This research addresses three questions: 1) Are there differences in the human values of social and commercial entrepreneurs; 2) Are there human values that are shared by both social and commercial entrepreneurs; and 3) Do human values of entrepreneurs influence the entrepreneurial opportunities they identify. Two comparative studies were performed on different groups of entrepreneurs to explore these questions: Study 1 analyzing the opportunity identification processes; and Study 2 evaluating the opportunity identification processes in addition to analyzing the human values of each entrepreneur. The findings of this study support hypotheses suggesting that there are values, specifically Power, Achievement and Hedonism that are unique to Commercial Entrepreneurs. Social Entrepreneurs identified the values of Universalism1, Universalism2 and Tradition as being significantly more important to social entrepreneurs than they were to commercial entrepreneurial activity. In addition, Self-Direction and Benevolence were identified as values that both types of entrepreneur deem important. Finally, findings also indicate that higher-order type can be predictive of the type of opportunity that will be identified by an entrepreneur. These findings are particularly interesting in light of recent research suggesting that entrepreneurship is becoming a ubiquitous practice.
Diana Bilimoria, PhD (Committee Chair)
Barbara Bird, PhD (Committee Member)
Ron Fry, PhD (Committee Member)
David Kolb, PhD (Committee Member)
Roger Saillant, PhD (Committee Member)
140 p.
Entrepreneurship
entrepreneurs, human values

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Messer, T. E. (2015). Commercial and Social Entrepreneurs: An Examination of the Influence of Human Values on the Opportunity Identification Process [Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1422291015

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Messer, Tracey. Commercial and Social Entrepreneurs: An Examination of the Influence of Human Values on the Opportunity Identification Process . 2015. Case Western Reserve University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1422291015.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Messer, Tracey. "Commercial and Social Entrepreneurs: An Examination of the Influence of Human Values on the Opportunity Identification Process ." Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1422291015

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

case1422291015
885
© 2015, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Commercial and Social Entrepreneurs: An Examination of the Influence of Human Values on the Opportunity Identification Process by Tracey Eira Messer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies and OhioLINK.