Understanding and redefining social entrepreneurship through social entrepreneurs' personal values and experiences in Türkiye

Social entrepreneurship is growing in importance for its contribution to addressing social problems and improving the welfare of society. Social entrepreneurs' values have a decisive role and significance in social entrepreneurship activities. However, there are extremely limited studies on the in-depth discussion of values and how they influence social entrepreneurs. This dissertation aims to explore how social entrepreneurs' values affect their social entrepreneurship activities. Another aim of the dissertation is to reveal social entrepreneurship and its problems by focusing on the experiences of social entrepreneurs. To achieve these aims, interpretative phenomenology design, one of the qualitative research methods, was used. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirty-five social entrepreneurs using criterion and snowball sampling methods. To support the research data, the websites of the interviewed social entrepreneurs and the videos about them were analysed as secondary data. All data were subjected to interpretative phenomenology analysis with the help of NVivo 12 Plus software. The research findings are presented in five main themes: a) defining social entrepreneurship, b) core values of social entrepreneurs, c) value-based social entrepreneurship, d) key factors affecting being a social entrepreneur, and e) the benefits and challenges of being a social entrepreneur. The research provides empirical evidence that social entrepreneurs have collectivist and universal values such as benevolence, humanitarianism, justice, and equality and that these values directly motivate them to initiate and sustain their social enterprises. In addition, since there is no commonly accepted clear definition of social entrepreneurs, a new value-based approach that centres on the values of actors in the social entrepreneurship ecosystem is proposed. For this purpose, actors in the social entrepreneurship ecosystem are analysed in a value-centred way and three types of social entrepreneurs are defined as value-based, mimetic, and value-conflicted. The research results guide practitioners and policy makers in distinguishing between these three types of social entrepreneurs. Moreover, value-based social entrepreneurs exhibit behaviours in line with their values and believe that they are doing meaningful work, which leads to stronger moral satisfaction and greater resilience against challenges. Another important result of the research shows that the main factors that lead people to become social entrepreneurs and to develop their social benefit-oriented values are closely related to a) socio-economic factors, b) cultural and institutional structures, c) family, education and social environment, d) values and personality, e) experiences and f) the search for meaning in work. In this context, the other major outcome of the research is to identify the key factors that lead people to become social entrepreneurs and to engage in social entrepreneurship and to provide academics, practitioners, and policy makers with a deeper understanding of what needs to be done to develop social entrepreneurship. Finally, the research findings indicate that social entrepreneurs face various challenges in terms of cultural, human resources, financing, and legal aspects. However, being a social entrepreneur also has some advantages such as the high number of supports and grants since it is a subject that attracts international attention, a strong sense of spirituality because they act in accordance with their values, and the ability to become a pioneering enterprise in the ecosystem quickly. Focusing on the experiences of social entrepreneurs, the dissertation identifies the challenges and advantages of social entrepreneurs and suggests value-based policies and strategies for academics, practitioners, and policy makers. The study also provides empirical evidence that negative attitudes and perceptions towards social entrepreneurship in the family and social environment can change positively as awareness of social entrepreneurship increases. Social entrepreneurship should be promoted more, and awareness of social entrepreneurship should be increased. If a family structure, educational life, and social environment that glorifies and develops social benefit values from childhood can be achieved, individuals may be more interested in social entrepreneurship and social problems.