Measuring Intentional Behavior Of Commercial Entrepreneurs Towards Social Entrepreneurship In Pakistan

The research focused on identifying intentional behavior and attitude towards social entrepreneurship in young commercial entrepreneurs in Pakistan.The research employs a comprehensive theoretical and empirical modeling and testing to minimize the confusion between social entrepreneurship readiness and social entrepreneurship intentions.The main question which this research tries to answer is "what are the factors which crucial to accept social entrepreneurship careers by commercial entrepreneurs?".To test this idea the primary constructs were education and training,social empathy,prior experience,entrepreneurial self-efficacy and pro-activeness of entrepreneurs.The study hypothesized that education and training,social empathy and prior life or work experience have a direct impact on readiness behavior of individuals which ultimately lead them to pursue social entrepreneurship as their career.The data for this study was collected from young entrepreneurs belonging to Pakistan.A total of 700 questionnaires were utilized out of this 463 were obtained from the respondents for analysis.The confirmatory analysis was used to verify the constructs theoretically and multi-regression and structural equation modeling was used to test hypothesis.It is concluded from the results that education and training have a visible influence in building entrepreneurial confidence in young entrepreneurs.The reason is very straight forward that when individuals have acquired proper education they have necessary knowledge for business,social interactions,market environment and business processes,they can perform better in recognizing opportunities and solving social problems.The results have shown that education and training(E&T)has provided youth with basic but important skills to transform information into knowledge which leads them to examine the environment better.Social empathy had a significant impact on pro-activeness while it doesn't show any effect on entrepreneurial self-efficacy.The higher the social empathy is the higher will be the proactiveness of an individual because they have emotional attachment with the people,and soft-hearted nature therefore they can recognize opportunities pro-actively.Prior life and work experience have shown positive relation with entrepreneurial self-efficacy as well as pro-active behavior which shows that people who have harsh life experiences or have worked in social sector are more likely to adopt social entrepreneurial careers as they have higher intentions for this.Individuals with social entrepreneurship attitude are keen to discover ways to find opportunities for social entrepreneurship.Entrepreneurial self-efficacy and pro-activeness have a direct positive effect on entrepreneurship attitude and thus build intentions for social entrepreneurship.Pro-activeness and self-efficacy are unique and critical factor for boosting the likeliness of entrepreneurship.These behaviors enhance the confidence and productivity of entrepreneurs and help them to take risks where other can't even collect courage to do so.When an individual has built the attitude toward social entrepreneurship it means they are feeling happy and accomplished with what they are doing for society.Therefore,they often take risks which are not commonly taken by other traditional business persons.Given the need of developing social entrepreneurship in Pakistan by introducing soft policies for social startups,it is recommended that future research should be done to explore the concept with a bigger picture by including a large sample size with all provinces of Pakistan with larger demographic and geographic variables.Future research should also high-light the relationships between social entrepreneurship and government policies,culture,and religion aspects.