Consequences of Cultural Leadership Styles for Social Entrepreneurship: A Theoretical Framework

The purpose of this conceptual article is to understand how the interplay of national-level institutions of culturally endorsed leadership styles, government effectiveness, and societal trust affects individual likelihood to become social entrepreneurs. We present an institutional framework comprising cultural leadership styles (normative institutions), government effectiveness (regulatory institutions), and societal trust (cognitive institutions) to predict individual likelihood of social entrepreneurship. Using the insight of culture–entrepreneurship fit and drawing on institutional configuration perspective we posit that culturally endorsed implicit leadership theories (CLTs) of charismatic and participatory leadership positively impact the likelihood of individuals becoming social entrepreneurs. Further, we posit that this impact is particularly pronounced when a country’s regulatory quality manifested by government effectiveness is supportive of social entrepreneurship and when there exist high levels of societal trust. Research on CLTs and their impact on entrepreneurial behavior is limited. We contribute to comparative entrepreneurship research by introducing a cultural antecedent of social entrepreneurship in CLTs and through a deeper understanding of their interplay with national-level institutions to draw the boundary conditions of our framework.