The Role of Compassion in IT-Based Social Entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurship is a complex form of organization, which includes technological organizations, where market-based methods are used to solve social problems. Currently, the issue continues to increase in popularity, but remains poorly understood and its motivations remain undertheorized. The researchers affirm that compassion can complement the individual’s own traditional motivations to influence social entrepreneurship. A model of three mechanisms is presented (integrative thinking, prosocial cost-benefit analysis and commitment to alleviate the suffering of others) that transform compassion into social entrepreneurship and identify the institutional conditions under which it is most likely to be carry on. In this article, we present an introduction on the definition of compassion, a model of how compassion encourages entrepreneurship and a model of the emerging organizational capacity for compassion, and we also discuss the contribution of both models.