Social entrepreneurship competency: an approach by discipline and gender

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to analyze how university men and women in different disciplines of study in Mexico perceive social entrepreneurship competencies, using a multifactorial analysis to find possible areas of opportunity to reduce the gender gap in social-entrepreneurship-project proposals.Design/methodology/approachThis is a quantitative study with a validated questionnaire that records the perception levels of five social entrepreneurship subcompetencies. The survey, which includes 28 indicators, was applied to 140 university students from different disciplines. Hypothesis testing was applied to identify significant differences between men and women in each subcompetency by disciplinary area.FindingsIn the global sample, significant differences by gender were observed only in the social value subcompetency. In the disciplinary analysis, significant differences were found in architecture and design, business, and engineering and science.Research limitations/implicationsThe questionnaire only gathered data about the students' perceptions. To the extent that perception is triangulated with other instruments, it is possible to increase knowledge regarding how to train in social entrepreneurship.Practical implicationsThe results can be useful for university training and increasing the envisioning and formulating of government projects by young people who create new businesses.Originality/valueThis research contributes to the literature on the role of gender-specific perceptions of social entrepreneurship in Mexico.

Social Entrepreneurship Education: A Combination of Knowledge Exploitation and Exploration Processes

“…Recently, entrepreneurship education has gained increased importance and interest among scholars, governors, managers, policymakers, and business people (Centobelli et al 2019;Jones and Matlay 2011;Langston 2020;Liguori and Winkler 2020;Nabi et al 2016;Ndou et al 2018;Secundo et al 2021;Ratten and Jones 2021;Ratten 2020;Vázquez-Parra et al 2020), who have widely highlighted the significant role of Entrepreneurship Education (EE) in promoting more entrepreneurial mindsets, attitudes, and behaviors.…”

“…Therefore, today we are witnessing an expansion of EE to different disciplines (e.g., science and technology, art, culture, and social sciences, etc.) with the aim to promote the creation of new skills, competencies, and capabilities (Cassia et al 2014;Fayolle 2008;Mian et al 2016) for creating new societal ventures (Vázquez-Parra et al 2020).…”

“…However, diverse factors and challenges impact the effective development of entrepreneurial competencies, knowledge, skills, and abilities (Ndou et al 2018) relevant for creating and proposing innovative ventures that have a social impact (Lawrence et al 2012;Vázquez-Parra et al 2020).…”

“…It has been widely argued that the most relevant challenges of entrepreneurship education consist of the different dimensions of competencies to be created, the pedagogical approaches, learning strategies, and knowledge creation processes (Fayolle 2013;Lackéus 2020;Secundo et al 2016); SEE requires innovative and multidimensional analysis (Vázquez-Parra et al 2020).…”

“…As entrepreneurship activity is the result of new and existing knowledge used to facilitate economic development (Welter et al 2019), a specific issue to analyze is to understand the knowledge processes (Vázquez-Parra et al 2020) and the knowledge mechanisms of forming entrepreneurial skills, mindsets, and competences in the students.…”