The purpose of this study is to analysis the impact of social entrepreneurs's welfare consciousness on the social enterprises performance. It's specifically meant to examine the welfare consciousness of social entrepreneurs of work-integration social ...
The purpose of this study is to analysis the impact of social entrepreneurs's welfare consciousness on the social enterprises performance. It's specifically meant to examine the welfare consciousness of social entrepreneurs of work-integration social enterprises, the subfactors of their welfare consciousness and the impact of their welfare consciousness on the life satisfaction of their employees in a bid to give some theoretical and practical suggestions on how to boost the life satisfaction of the employees of social enterprises as their social performance.
The subjects in this study were the social entrepreneurs of 41 work- integration social enterprises and their employees. The social entrepreneurs and the employees were separately surveyed, and the answer sheets from 224 respondents who included 41 social entrepreneurs and 183 employees were gathered. The collected data were analyzed by the statistical package SPSS 17.0, and descriptive statistics analysis, correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis were utilized.
The major findings of the study were as follows:
First, as for the welfare consciousness of the social entrepreneurs and the subfactors of their welfare consciousness, the respondents got a mean of 3.26 out of possible five points, which indicated that their welfare consciousness wasn't good enough. Out of the subfactors of welfare consciousness, their recognition of social discrimination ranked first, followed by recognition of the necessity of social welfare and social participation will. Their collective average in the level of social welfare recognition and the level of recognition of the cause of poverty(M=2.92) was lower than their collective averages in the other items of welfare consciousness. Second, regarding differences among the social entrepreneurs in welfare consciousness according to their demographic characteristics, there were gaps in welfare consciousness according to gender, religious, academic credential, major, and social entrepreneur education experiences. The respondents who were male, who were not religious, who received high-school or higher education, who majored in social welfare or sociology and who received social entrepreneur education were better in terms of welfare consciousness than their counterparts who were female, who were religious, who received middle-school or lower education, who didn't major in social welfare or sociology, and who didn't receive social entrepreneur education. Third, as for differences among the social enterprise employees in life satisfaction according to their sociodemographic characteristics, there were significant gaps in life satisfaction according to age and academic credential. Fourth, a multiple regression analysis was made to determine the impact of the welfare consciousness of the social entrepreneurs and the subfactors of their welfare consciousness on the life satisfaction of the employees, the welfare consciousness of the social entrepreneurs was found to affect the life satisfaction of the employees. The employees were better satisfied with their life when the social entrepreneurs had a better welfare consciousness. To be specific, the life satisfaction of the employees was under the influence of the level of social entrepreneurs' recognition of social discrimination, the level of their social welfare recognition and their social participation will among the five factors of welfare consciousness.
The above-mentioned findings of the study had the following theoretical implications:
First, this study is of significance in that it attempted to analyze the welfare consciousness of social entrepreneurs. In this study, a social enterprise was regarded as a welfare system, and the welfare consciousness of the social entrepreneurs who run social enterprises was investigated. And this study is meaningful in that it provided rationale required for policy setting geared toward boosting the performance of social enterprises by founding that their welfare consciousness had an impact on the social performance of the social enterprises. Second, this study is of significance in that it made up for the limits of earlier studies on the social performance of social enterprises. Unlike earlier studies, this study explored the qualitative value of social performance, and that made it possible to assess social performance more profoundly. Thus, this study is meaningful in that it confirmed the social performance of social enterprises in detail and the importance of social performance for social enterprises.
The practical implications of the findings of the study were as below:
First, this study is of significance in that it found that there was improvement in the life satisfaction of the social enterprise employees when the social entrepreneurs majored in social welfare or related academic disciplines. It could be of practical use to prospective social entrepreneurs who intend to be social entrepreneurs. Second, this study found that the life satisfaction of the social enterprise employees got lower when the business career of social entrepreneurs was longer. This finding could be of practical use for supplementary education geared toward entrepreneurs. Third, this study found that the welfare consciousness of the social entrepreneurs affected the life satisfaction of the employees and thereby proved the necessity of the improvement of the welfare consciousness of social entrepreneurs.
This study focused on the social goals of social entrepreneurs, and the effort by this study to look into the welfare consciousness of entrepreneurs as one of the factors to determine the attainment of the social goals of social entrepreneurs made it possible to confirm the importance of the welfare consciousness of entrepreneurs. This study found that in order to bolster the social performance of social enterprises, the prolonged management of social entrepreneurs and the improvement of their welfare co