No good Samaritan without a merchant. Geen dominee zonder koopman. Ondersoek naar de relatie tussen ondernemerschap en bedrijfsresultaten binnen het Nederlandse sociale enterprise

No Good Samaritan without a merchant Study of the relationship between entrepreneurship and business performance among Dutch social enterprises By: Karin van der Laan Keywords: social enterprise, entrepreneurship, business performance, entrepreneurial orientation, social value orientation Abstract A social entrepreneur is an idealist who wants to make an improvement to the world and at the same time an entrepreneur with a product or service to sell. A Good Samaritan and merchant rolled into one. This study looks at the relationship between the entrepreneurship and business performance among Dutch social enterprises. It is a reproduction of a study conducted in 2013 among Australian social entrepreneurs. A social enterprise is a hybrid type organisation, which combines social impact with value creation. The social goal comes first, followed by the commercial aim. His entrepreneurship is commercial as well as social. His commercial entrepreneurial orientation is characterized by innovativeness, proactiveness and risk taking. His social entrepreneurship originates from his value orientation, which is aimed at maximizing the joint outcome through cooperation. Commercial enterprises are primarily focussed at maximizing shareholder value through profit while non-profit organizations are aimed at a social mission, servicing a variety of stakeholders and maintaining financial stability. When commercial and social entrepreneurship is combined in social entrepreneurship, this results in a higher level of complexity due to the greater variety of stakeholders. To measure its financial and commercial business performance a social enterprise uses the same methods as a commercial enterprise. The social impact is measured by first determining the social performance indicators, then measuring inputs & outputs and finally assigning monetary values to the relevant and significant outcomes. The results of this study conducted among 31 Dutch social entrepreneurs show that their entrepreneurial orientation is primarily manifested in their willingness to take risks. The results also show that their social value orientation is strong. They assess their financial and commercial business performance as fair. An analysis of the relationship between entrepreneurship and business performance shows that the commercial entrepreneurial orientation is the strongest positive influence on both the economic and social performance. In the original Australian study the social performance was shown to be a result of the social value orientation, whereas in the study conducted in the Netherlands this is a result of the entrepreneurial orientation. It is no doubt that the social entrepreneur is driven primarily by the social mission, however it is the commercial strategy that keeps the enterprise afloat. The Good Samaritan simply can’t sustain its mission without the company of the merchant. This finding underscores the concerns expressed in a survey in 2011 to the social enterprise sector in the Netherlands. The lack of entrepreneurial orientation is an obstacle to the growth of social enterprises. The question is whether social entrepreneurs are driven most by the maximization of mutual benefit or the minimization of the relative advantage. In other words, the goal is to eliminate the inequality, or the improvement of the benefit of both? The results from the studies in Australia and the Netherlands are used to formulate exploratory research hypotheses which can form the basis for further researc