Diasporan students social entrepreneurship intention: The moderating role of institutional support

• Published date: 01 February 2021
• Author: Sadia Lukman,Peng Xiao Bao,Benjamin Kweku‐Lugu,Vincent Ekow Arkorful,Amadu Latif,Annabelle Gadabu,Priscilla Charmaine‐Kwade,Ibrahim Basiru,Mohammed Abubakar Sadiq
• Date: 01 February 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2108

ACADEMIC PAPER

Diasporan students social entrepreneurship intention: The

moderating role of institutional support

Sadia Lukman

1

| Peng Xiao Bao

1

| Benjamin Kweku-Lugu

2

|

Vincent Ekow Arkorful

1

| Amadu Latif

1

| Annabelle Gadabu

1

|

Priscilla Charmaine-Kwade

1

| Ibrahim Basiru

1

| Mohammed Abubakar Sadiq

2

1

School of Public Affairs, University of Science

and Technology of China, Hefei, China

2

School of Management, University of Science

and Technology of China, Hefei, China

Correspondence

Sadia Lukman, School of Public Affairs,

University of Science and Technology of

China, Hefei, Anhui, China.

Email: sadialukman@yahoo.com

The daunting global challenges saddling polities and governments alike have resul-

tantly created a situation whereby governments and corporate civil society have

inadvertently reneged on delivering public good and services to citizens. In ensuring

and strengthening a public–private actor synergy, with particular emphasis on

leveraging acquired knowledge and skills of diaspora-based students, social entrepre-

neurship activities could be harnessed to provide sustainable remedies to social chal-

lenges such as unemployment, famine amongst others by utilizing social

entrepreneurship as a tool. Using the theory of planned behaviour as a theoretical

framework, the study elicited data from 322 respondents to empirically investigate

determinants of social entrepreneurship intentions of Ghanaian students, with the

moderating role of institutional support. Study results revealed that sense of social

responsibility and service learning have significant relationship with social entrepreneur-

ship intention. However, social volunteering experience had no significant relationship.

Moreover, whereas attitude to social entrepreneurship intention demonstrated a positive

relationship, institutional support as a moderator was also revealed to influence the

relationship betw een attitude and soc ial entrepreneurs hip intention. From the

study findings, we discourse on the implications for social entrepreneurship in

Ghana to policy makers and stakeholders.

1|INTRODUCTION

Recent decades have witnessed an increased global commitment to

creating opportunities, whiles fostering the sustainable development

efforts. These commitments demonstrated by state and non-state

actors disparately, and sometimes jointly by both actors are designed

to enhance social livelihood and human well-being. Social entrepre-

neurship as an emerging global concept has been touted as an effica-

cious conduit for addressing diverse social challenges. Essentially, the

concept is acknowledged to have tremendous potency in helping to

alleviate poverty, unemployment, and environmental challenges

amongst others (Huda et al., 2019; Polbitsyn, 2018). Therefore, it is

not surprising that, social enterprise-based institutions are deploying

the concept to drive corporate goals. Significantly, social enterprises

have been variously conceptualized. In the views of Sun, Lee, and

Sohn (2019), social enterprises are referred to as organizations which

marshal and deploy business principles to tackle social problems.

Social enterprises undertake this activity through well-tailored innova-

tive strategies.

Social enterprises focus mostly vacillate between commercial and

social objectives. Within the context, social enterprises contribute

massively to job creation, workforce development and provides sup-

plementary income (Ip, Liang, Wu, Law, & Liu, 2018). Recent times

have witnessed a growth in social entrepreneurship research studies.

The ground-breaking initiative to advance a research model to explain

social entrepreneurship intention (SEI) creation was developed and

pioneered by Mair and Noboa (2006) through the application of the

theory of planned behaviour (TPB). Against this background,

Received: 31 August 2019 Revised: 14 December 2019 Accepted: 3 March 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2108

J Public Affairs. 2021;21:e2108. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 1of12

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2108