Romanians’ perceptions regarding the drivers of social venture. Evidence based on AGER data

For many decades, entrepreneurship and making profit were seen interchangeable and almost impossible to separate. It has been widely assumed that entrepreneurs were perceived as mostly commercially driven and profit-oriented, with dividends shared among company shareholders. Recently, the emergent literature was beginning to question this representation of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs and discussion about society impact of entrepreneurial actions has been brought into the front page (Sepulveda 2015; Farmer et al. 2016). Austin et al. (Austin et al. 2006) distinguished between two types of entrepreneurship, one with a for-profit orientation and the other one driven by society needs. In their paper, for-profit entrepreneurship represents the identification, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities that result in profits for shareholders. On the other hand, social entrepreneurship refers to the identification, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities that result in social value for community. Other scholars took this theory forward and explained how the two types of entrepreneurship work for a higher education institution (Paunescu and Cantaragiu 2012). However, for-profit and social entrepreneurship should not be put in contrast. Rather they should bemore accurately conceptualized as ranging from a purely social nature to an economic one. The present paper aims to explore the perceptions of Romanians regarding the business purpose of their new venture, and further to investigate the factors that drive their desire to start a social-oriented new venture. The study relies on the Amway Global Entrepreneurship Report (AGER)˘ (AGER 2018) dataset. The paper starts with a brief review of the literature and identification of the problem investigated. Then it explains the methodology used to analyse the driving factors which will influence the individuals’ desire to start a new venture with a social purpose. Finally, analysis is conducted on selected data and conclusions are drawn based on results.