Social Entrepreneurship and the Competitiveness of Students in Social Entrepreneurship Program

Abstract

This study aims to identify the contribution of social entrepreneurship on the competitiveness of the active participants in social entrepreneurship program called Enactus (formerly known as Students in Free Enterprise or SIFE). Social entrepreneurship in this study is divided into three dimensions, namely sociality, innovation and market orientation. Competitive dimension encompasses communication,planning and administration, strategic action, multi-cultural and self-management. This study is a cross-sectional survey using a quantitative approach involving 394 respondents. Questionnaires are used as the main instrument of data collection and data were analyzed using SPSS version 19.0. The findings by Pearson correlation test show a moderately strong positive relationship between social entrepreneurship and competitiveness. Results of the multiple regression analysis (stepwise) show that the three social entrepreneurship predictor variables namely sociality, innovation and market orientation are the factors of competitiveness. Overall, the predictor variables accounted for 36.4 per cent (r=0.603) of changes in the students’ competitiveness variance [F(3,390)=74,361, p<0.05]. The implication of this study to the Ministry of Education Malaysia and Enactus Malaysia Foundation is that both parties need to encourage more students to actively participate in the social entrepreneurship programs with the aim to create more competitive human capital that have wide potential to bring prosperity to its community using social entrepreneurship approach.