Social entrepreneurship and Islamic philanthropy

Social entrepreneurship is an emerging area of research that examines entrepreneurs and organisations that are significantly influenced by social motives instead of being purely economically driven. Academic researchers on this emerging area mainly discuss about social entrepreneurship in Western context where business values are in general moving towards greater attention to social concerns. Today, there is little research on social entrepreneurship in the Islamic context, although a few studies discuss Islamic philanthropy and its influences on the well-being of a society. The different forms of Islamic philanthropy can be expected to have connections to social entrepreneurship. The present study focuses on one key socio-economic institution, zakat, in the Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) countries, namely the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait and aims to contrast its historical and modern role, where the former is a form of philanthropy but the latter has a potential linkage to social entrepreneurship. The study aims to contribute to our understanding of social entrepreneurship by bringing new insights on social entrepreneurship in a non-Western context.