Social entrepreneurship : an integrated framework for earned income opportunities adoption by nonprofit organizations in Thailand

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of how social entrepreneurs adopt earned income opportunities to benefit their financial organization sustainability. The study seeks to 1) investigate the concept of social entrepreneurship, 2) analyze the factors that may contribute to the adoption of earned income opportunities, and 3) propose and integrated framework. A multiple case study was preferred for this study. Purposeful sampling was particularly relevant to this qualitative study because of the small sample size. The specific sampling strategy used for this study was criterion sampling. The selection criteria were: 1) organizations should be based in Thailand for pragmatic reasons; 2) organizations should have developed earned income activities; and 3) organizations must be nonprofit. In depth interviews and document research were used to obtain the data. Key participants were selected and interviewed via using open-ended questions. The results of the study show that various factors influence how nonprofit organizations adopt their earned income opportunities. The analysis of the interview transcripts and the observations and documents indicate that motivation factors, including perceived social legitimacy, degree of external dependence on pressuring constituents, degree of interconnected, financial constraints, and organizational context, including, top management commitment, human resources readiness, entrepreneurial orientation, and organization size and leadership, are associated with the nonprofit organization’s adoption of earned income opportunities. The researcher finds that the leadership factor is the key of success for all non-government organizations due to their specific nature. The leader determines the vision for the organization, glues all the activities, and inspires all those involved in the implementation of their plan. Leaders of the nonprofits not only make the final decision to adopt new methods of financing, but also influence all other key factors. The other factor that the researcher points out as critical is human resource readiness. This factor has not only direct effect on the earned income opportunities. However, it serves as a transmitter for many other factors like leadership, top management commitment, entrepreneurial orientation and degree of interconnectedness. This makes human resource readiness a very strong agent to bring in changes in the funding system of nonprofits. These factors explain how nonprofit organizations have turned themselves toward the social enterprise. Nonprofit organizations adopt earned income opportunities as a vehicle to create social enterprises that combine commercial and charitable goals. The social enterprise is an alternative to the organizations’ response to the environment so that they can be sustainable and survive.Earned income opportunities offer the opportunity for nonprofit organizations to establish independent supplies of resources, and these independent resource streams may be viewed as being particularly valuable to organizations that seek to be self-reliant and continue their goal of providing social services.