Social Entrepreneurial Capabilities and Shared Value Creation: Insights from Social Enterprises in Western Province of Sri Lanka

Social Entrepreneurship plays a vital role in introducing social innovations to pressing problems. Social entrepreneurship requires high level of interaction with the stakeholders in order to create economic, social, and environmental values. Hence, social enterprises need to develop unique capabilities which are important to create shared value. However, the impact of social entrepreneurship capabilities on shared value creation needs more research where lack of empirical studies in the Sri Lankan context. Therefore, the main aim of the study is to investigate the effect of social entrepreneurial capabilities on value creation of social enterprises in Sri Lanka. Further, this study identified the social entrepreneurial capabilities under four dimensions as mission-driven management capabilities, stakeholder management capabilities, cross-sector management capabilities and environmental management capabilities and value creation under three dimensions as economic value creation, social value creation and environmental value creation. This study is quantitative in nature and data was collected from 100 social entrepreneurs in Western province through a structured questionnaire. Regression analysis was performed to test the hypotheses and to achieve the research objectives. The results of this study reveal that there is a significant positive effect of social entrepreneurship capabilities on shared value creation of social enterprises. Since this this is an emerging research area, study contributes to the existing literature and the outcome of this study will provide valuable insights for policy makers in Sri Lanka. Ultimately, it opens avenues for further studies as well.