Title: The critical success factors of social entrepreneurship in India: an empirical study

Authors: Mir Shahid Satar; Shibu John

Addresses: Department of Management Studies, University of Kashmir (South Campus), Anantnag, Jammu and Kashmir, 192101, India ' Department of Management Studies, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, 110062, India

Abstract: The paper describes the social entrepreneurship (S-ENT) critical success factors (CSFs) identified from a survey study carried out in India. The ranking analysis of the survey results shows that 28 factors are rated as critical for determining the S-ENT success of a social enterprise. Further, the factor analysis revealed that the identified CSFs can be grouped into seven clusters, namely leadership, social enterprise planning, community engagement, innovative financing, human capital, legal support, and social enterprise marketing. The outcome of the thesis provides pioneering insights through a structured framework for investigating the individual CSFs and their different levels of contribution to S-ENT success. The inventive knowledge generated out of the thesis work, can be specifically fruitful for practitioners and other stakeholders in identifying the areas of their social enterprise functioning that demand their utmost priority and attention, in identifying the skills and resources required for their venture success, in assessing their competitive advantage and in helping to setup evaluation mechanism of their ventures etc. The pioneering insights can also be utilised by academicians for theory building and further analysis in the field.

Keywords: social entrepreneurship; S-ENT; social enterprise; critical success factors; CSFs; strategic management; India; innovation management; planning.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESB.2019.101103

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2019 Vol.37 No.3, pp.309 - 341

Received: 16 Aug 2017
Accepted: 09 Sep 2017
Published online: 24 Jul 2019 *

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