Societal-Level Collectivism and Trust: Influence on Social and Commercial Entrepreneurship

Abstract

We use insights from social capital theory and culture perspective to study how societal-level collectivism and trust facilitate or constrain the emergence of social and commercial entrepreneurship. Using 60,000 individual-level responses obtained from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) survey of 28 countries and supplementing with country-level data obtained from the World Values Survey (WVS) and the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) study, our results demonstrate that while societal collectivism decreases the likelihood of commercial entrepreneurship, it increases those of social entrepreneurship. Further, while societal-level trust influences both social and commercial entrepreneurship positively, the strength of this positive influence is felt more strongly on social entrepreneurship than commercial.