Entrepreneurial Motivation and Social Enterprises: An Empirical Analysis on Founders of Social Ventures in Bangladesh

Success of market based entrepreneurial projects embedded with a social mission contributed to growing interest to social entrepreneurship in existing entrepreneurship literature. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the widely accepted motivational factors influencing entrepreneurial process have similar influence on social entrepreneurs in Bangladesh. Based on the seminal work of Shane et al. (2003) on entrepreneurial motivation, a survey was conducted among the social entrepreneurs in Bangladesh and collected data was analyzed. A regression analysis shows that some of widely accepted factors have significant influence while others have less or non-significant influence on Bangladeshi social entrepreneurs. This empirical paper contributes to better understanding of behavioral aspect of social entrepreneurship in Bangladesh where a high number of world's leading social ventures were formed and expanded world-wide.