A political ideology lens on social entrepreneurship motivations

ABSTRACT

The traditional literature regarding social entrepreneurship does not question the political dimension. On the contrary, it tends to de-politicize societal issues. A growing number of researchers underline how this perspective cannot address the complexity and the dialogical nature of social entrepreneurship. However, while there may be a case for incorporating a political perspective, there is currently no conceptual framework to systematically inform an empirical exploration of the role played by the political vision of entrepreneurs. In this paper, we use the concept of political ideology to offer a solid framework to show how politics can shape social entrepreneurs’ motivations. More precisely we identify three political profiles – anti-statist, reformist and neoliberal – which shape the motives to engage in social entrepreneurship. We take an embedded case study approach of 17 social entrepreneurs involved in a social innovation boot camp and reveal the existence of both, left and right-wing approaches in social entrepreneurship.     

Target marketing in a social marketing context: gender differences in importance ratings of promoted intrinsic and extrinsic restricted exchange benefits of military enlistment

Social marketing involves influencing voluntary behaviour of people towards a social end. Examples of social marketing range from campaigns to encourage healthy physical behaviour to efforts to encourage tax support for public education, overcome racism, or stimulate ‘patriotic’ behaviour. Using data from a summer 2001 telephone survey of 600 young adults, this paper investigates how recruitment campaigns may benefit from considering gender differences in importance ratings of a variety of benefits promoted by the military in the USA. Importance ratings are assessed using differences in means and variances tests. Findings identify gender specific differences that may be used to enhance recruitment campaigns. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

A consumer education programme based on the Transtheoretical Model of Change

MONEY 2000? is a successful consumer education programme that was implemented by Cooperative Extension personnel in over two dozen states of the USA between 1996 and 2002. One of the unique features of this programme is that it was based on the Transtheoretical Model of Change (TTM), a framework that has been widely used to study health‐related behaviour changes such as smoking cessation. This paper first describes how the MONEY 2000? programme was developed around major constructs contained within the TTM. Findings are reported from a survey conducted with participants in the first two states that delivered the programme. The findings suggest that several change processes used by MONEY 2000? participants are associated with specific stages of change. In addition, there may be differences in behavioural changes between participants who increased their savings and those who reduced their debts.     

Effectiveness and Effects of China’s Capital Controls

I. IntroductionNations at every stage of development and in every region of the world are more closelylinked through trade in goods and services, through flows of funds and investments ineach others’ economies than ever before. But in sharp contrast to more and more nationsloosening restrictions on international trade, controls over capital flows are still substantialnearly everywhere except in the most developed economies. This is certainly the case inChina, where restrictions on movements …     

The rise of defensive engineering: how personal liability considerations impact decision-making

Abstract

Based on a survey of Australian engineers (n = 275) this paper examines the impact of personal liability considerations on engineering decision-making. Almost all respondents who make high-stakes decisions saw questions of liability as having both positive (90%) and negative (87%) impacts. Our analysis shows that awareness of personal liability acts to focus the attention of many engineers on the moral dimension of their work. However, it also encourages more expensive decision-making, inhibition of innovation and professional paralysis. We argue that while personal legal liability is a legitimate way to focus engineers’ attention on the potential impact of their work, a problem arises when decision-makers are held responsible for disasters over which they had little control. The focus then shifts to ‘defensive engineering’ practices that are aimed at limiting individual liability rather than disaster prevention. Legal processes that are seen to unfairly allocate blame do not encourage practices that support future disaster prevention.     

Political patronage and analysts’ forecast precision

We test whether the channel by which the government plays the role of political patron to selected firms influences analysts’ forecast precision in Malaysia. Correcting for analysts’ self-selection bias, we find a negative relation between analysts’ forecast errors and the social dimension of political patronage, as proxied by government-controlled institutional ownership. The reverse is found for the economic dimension of political patronage, as proxied by the percentage shareholding of government-linked corporations. We find no evidence that the personal dimension of political patronage influences analysts’ forecast precision.