How Does Participation in a Social Enterprise Change the Social Entrepreneur? A Narrative Inquiry

This study identified a reciprocal relationship between the social entrepreneur and the social enterprise. In addition, this study identified and found that the self-transformative entrepreneur, a new construct, creates a social enterprise based on a personal need and not based on opportunity alone which is a more traditional approach. Most research focuses on the characteristics and social impacts of the social enterprise externally. Given this gap in research, there is an opportunity to add to the practice theory and social entrepreneurship literature a description of how the practice of social entrepreneurship, defined for this research, as encompassing the creation of the social enterprise and the everyday challenges and opportunities of the work itself, changes the person doing the work holistically. A narrative inquiry design aligns closely with these research purposes. Narrative inquiry is research that captures personal dimensions of experience over time and takes account of the relationship between individual experience and cultural context. Also, identity change occurred as a result of the practices employed to create and run a social enterprise successfully—this identity change ties into the reciprocal relationship between the social enterprise and the social entrepreneur. The two entities go hand in hand with each other—the social entrepreneur is acting on and through the enterprise, and the enterprise is acting on the entrepreneur. Each of these findings are interconnected phenomena working together to produce a new description of the self-transformative social entrepreneur