The leadership capability to scale social enterprises : An exploratory study about the factors that shape social entrepreneurs' capability to scale social enterprises

Abstract: Background: The world’s population is confronting challenges related to sustainability. Businesses can and should contribute to solving these challenges, through their activities. Social entrepreneurs are the driving force of scaling social enterprises, through which economic and social value can be maximized. Hence, it is important to understand the leadership factors that shape a social entrepreneur’s capability to lead scaling processes. Purpose: To explore the role leadership factors play in social entrepreneurs’ capability to scale social enterprises Method: Ontology- Relativism; Epistemology- Social constructionism; Strategy- Qualitative, Exploratory; Design- Inductive, Grounded theory; Data collection- 11 Semi-structured interviews; Sampling- Purposive, Snowball; Data analysis- Grounded analysis. Conclusion: Several leadership factors, including background, personality characteristics and skills, motivation, team, work environment, networks and partnerships, environmental forces, and underlying factors, are identified as shaping social entrepreneurs’ capability to scale. By acknowledging not only multiple leadership factors but also on what level they exist and how they are connected, novel insights about social entrepreneurs’ capability to scale are offered.