CHAPTER 6: DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSION
6.5 Objective 3: How do the personal experiences and context work together to motivate
Personal experience is difficult to separate from environmental conditions. This is because the personal experiences are often shaped by the conditions prevalent in the social environment. That is, they are interconnected. Bandura argued with classical idea that behavior is a response to environmental conditions or shaped by inner personality and proposed that behavior is a bidirectional product between personal factors and environmental conditions (Bandura, 1999).
That is, people bring a host of factors to their environment such as past experiences, perceptions, and emotions which are also shaped by the environmental conditions which may facilitate or hinder certain activities. Bandura then developed a term ‘Triadic Reciprocal Determinism’ to explain that the decision-making process associated with behavior is influenced by personal factors (cognitive), environmental factors, and the outcome expectations for engaging in certain activities (Bandura, 1999).
The early traumatic experience and/or personal struggles with social problems is a dominant experience that acts as motivation for individuals to start their social enterprises. It is through the negative experiences of an individual that he becomes alert to the struggles of other people in the community. For example, rural poverty, drug addiction, lack career platform for rural children to make informed career choices, and crime are all personal experiences of the participants in the study. And, these personal experiences played an important role in shaping the issues being addressed by the established social enterprises. Nyamanhindi (2014) also found that part of the reason why social entrepreneurs start their social enterprises is because they feel that their personal experiences are also being experienced by other people which reflects the broader picture of social challenges within many communities. Social entrepreneurs feel the moral obligation to act on
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behalf of the people they serve especially if they themselves underwent similar challenges (Nyamanhindi, 2014; Mthombeni, 2016). Furthermore, since social entrepreneurs grew up in rural and township environments, they are more closely connected with the struggles faced by various people and more likely to identify problems and understand social needs. The existing social problems in the community are by far the biggest motivation for social entrepreneurs because the primary aim for establishing a social enterprise is to address those problems by using business principles (Austin et al. 2006). The ‘social market-failure’ within the under-resourced communities provides a perceived legitimacy for ‘action’, which propels individuals toward social venture creation.
Austin et al. (2006, p. 6), define a social entrepreneurial opportunity as “a desired future state that is different from the present, with the belief that the achievement of that state is possible through social entrepreneurship”. Bandura believes that people bring a lot to their social environment, such as interests, values, and experiences, and the social environment also shapes the behaviour of people through opportunities and constraints. This is called reciprocal determinism. As a result, the social entrepreneurs start social enterprise in response to the prevailing problems within their immediate environment and the services provided by a social enterprise are highly contextual and tailored to fit the local context. For example, Ghalwash et al. (2017) found that the decision for Egyptian social entrepreneurs to start their social ventures, is motivated by the current issues within the Egyptian communities and the innovation is developed through past work experience, education, and transformative events.
Often social enterprises advance solutions that are practical, cost-effective and very efficient –the social enterprises are specifically set up to solve particular problems in their environments of which they continuously adapt to suit those environments. This is consistent with Mair and Noboa (2003) and Prabhu (1999), who argue that social entrepreneurs are motivated to create social value as a result of their desire to transform their communities. For example, Driving to Success was established because of the personal experiences of the founder who was raised by a single parent in Bhamshela and the challenges he endured growing up (not having school uniform, going to bed hungry, focusing on being a police or nurse) which affected the career choices he made. So he then established driving to success as a way of helping children from his community to make informed decisions about their careers in life and through the organisation, the founder does school tours and shares information on tertiary life, career choices available, and even collaborates with local businesses in order to provide school uniform and food parcels to under-privileged kids. Qagela
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creations was also established because the founder had undergone difficult experiences growing up and got involved in drugs and the motivation behind Qagela creations was to help other young people who are also addicted into drugs by imparting skills such as sewing to make bags and t- shirts among other things so that people can create sources of income and stay away from drugs.
The last example is Harambe PTY/Ltd which was established in order to provide employment opportunities for the growing rural population in Amandawe so as to improve the living conditions and the quality of life for young people instead of migrating to cities to look for opportunities.
In summary, personal experiences of social entrepreneurs play an important role in creating awareness of social problems (through personal struggles), which allow social entrepreneurs to identify problems areas (opportunities), mobilise resources needed (start a social enterprise) with the aim of addressing existing problems (creating social impact). The problems being addressed are often local and the social entrepreneur is often known in the community and so the social innovations are co-created with communities in order to generate social value.
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