The Impact of Societal Attitudes about Corporate Responsibility on Social Entrepreneurial Activity

A number of ecosystem factors influence the entry and engagement decisions of individual entrepreneurs – societal attitudes being one of them. We believe that advancing knowledge about the impact of different societal attitudes on entrepreneurial engagement is important. Prior research in this area has focused on societal attitudes that shape the mode of entry – such beliefs about gender roles or stigmas of business failure. Research is lacking on the effects of societal attitudes on the manner of organizing entrepreneurial entry and engagement. Drawing on Situationism Theory, we test for relationships between different societal attitudes about corporate social responsibility and individual decisions to engage in entrepreneurial activities with a social purpose. To test our hypotheses, we constructed a unique dataset for 26 countries built from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Flash Eurobarometer and World Bank Doing Business Reports. We find evidence of correlations that have important theoretical an...