Competing Identity: The Role of Family in Social Entrepreneurship

The paper revisits Fukuyama's (Trust: The social virtues and the creation of prosperity, 1995) work on the effect of social trust on economic development and considers further the relation between family and social entrepreneurship. Specifically focusing on social care services in Taiwan, the paper highlights the role of family in social entrepreneurship. With family as a starting point, social entrepreneurship is grounded, emerges, and evolves in distinctive contexts of each society even in a society with the paradox of 'familism'. By exploring the evolution of a social entrepreneurship case in Taiwan, this paper, expanding on Fukuyama, concludes that it is possible for the societies traditionally characterized by the paradox of familism to become more inclusive with higher trust through social entrepreneurship.