World-View , Locus of Control and Entrepreneurial Orientation in Social Entrepreneurship Endeavour

Purpose: Social entrepreneurship emphasizes on the social value creation through adoption of market-like behaviors. This study aims to explore the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and two independent variables comprise of locus of control and world view among those involve in social entrepreneurial venture in Malaysia. Design/Method/Approach: Self-administered questionnaires had been distributed to 87 natural farming participants in Pulau Banggi Sabah and Batang Lupar Sarawak. The questionnaire consists of 4 sections aimed to measure studied variables comprise of the benefit of project, entrepreneurial orientation, locus of control and worldview. Findings: The cross tabulation analysis shows that participants with the open world of view have demonstrated a higher entrepreneurial orientation (EO); while the closed-group demonstrates lower entrepreneurial orientation (EO). Furthermore, the analysis also shows that participants with external locus of control demonstrate higher EO as opposed to the internal locus of control group. The Spearman correlation analysis also indicates a significant association between EO and locus of control [r=0. 473, p= 0.00] as well as EO and world view [r= 0.552, p=0. 00]. Such results indicate that social entrepreneurs must possess high locus of control and opened-world view as both determine the existence of EO in social entrepreneurial endeavors. Originality/Value: The originality of this study lies in its attempt to explore the individual factors that potentially influence the effectiveness and variation in social entrepreneurial projects. Besides, the most important contribution of this study is to incorporate EO variable into social entrepreneur research context.


Introduction 1.
Sustainable Livelihood Approach (SLA) provides new development landscape that emphasizes most on the people (Ahmad Raflis et al. 2012).Based on SLA perspective, local people should utilize their assets (for example human, natural, financial, social and physical stocks of capital available in the household) to run activities that foster independent and sufficient livelihood outcomes.Livelihood refers to capabilities, assets (both material and social resources) and activities that become the means of human living (Chambers & Conway 1991).There are many productive activities to be used in operating sustainable livelihood such as agriculture, fisheries, dairy farms, forestry, locally produced products and small-scale economic projects.Most of the activities are performed through informal medium and contribute to the wellbeing of a particular group of people (Ming-Huang 2008;Sookram & Watson 2008;Ealham 2008;and Franck 2011)."Informal sector" refers to the legal as well illegal market-based production of goods and services that escapes detection in the official estimates of GDP (Sookram & Watson 2008).Whenever the informal activities were executed in the entrepreneurial based of behaviors, it can be recognize as a kind of social entrepreneurship.This has been parallel to Noruzi et al. (2010) and Greblikaite (2012) social entrepreneurship definition which refers to the application of business expertise and market -based skill to social value creation endeavors.However, we believed that successful social entrepreneurial venture requires for certain individual characteristics.Therefore, this study will explore the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation, locus of control and the world view of people who involved in social entrepreneurial venture.

KBI Natural Farming Project
The operationalization of this study has been made on a special social entrepreneurial project by Koperasi Belia Islam (KBI).The project has involved villagers in 2 rural areas in Sabah and Sarawak.The natural-farming project aims to increase the household income as well as to reduce household food-expenditure for the targeted marginalized groups.The household income is expected to increase due to the selling of edible crops, whereas reduction of household expenditure is obtained from consumption of self-produced vegetables.The project had involved a collaborative effort from three Malaysian agencies, namely Malaysia Ministry of Rural and Regional Development (KKLW), Felcra Berhad and Koperasi Belia Islam (KBI).KKLW and Felcra are government agencies which responsible for rural and land development in Malaysia; while KBI is a cooperative that advocates for Islamic-based economic practices.KBI had received grants from the government agency to run few community economic programs in rural areas.The natural farming project has assisted the rural people to accomplish three food related objectives comprises of food security, food safety and food sovereignty.The social entrepreneurship element can be identified in the form of the innovative gardening methods and proactive behaviors of participants throughout the project.For example, the participants are encouraged to adopt creative and innovative attempts to minimize their farming capital and operational expenses; producing their own fertilizer and expand creative farming technique to increase the production.

Social Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship has been long considered as a significant tool for socioeconomic growth and development (Lee & Peterson 2000).Benefits of entrepreneurial activities flow in the form of providing jobs opportunities, varieties of consumer goods and services offering as well as increasing the national prosperity and competitiveness.The entrepreneurial ventures have been established in either formal or informal modes.Recently, the entrepreneurship concept has been extended to a new domain known as social entrepreneurship and now popularly discussed by many academicians and practitioners since 1995 (Seelos &Mair 2005 andGreblikaite 2012).Based on Thompson (2008) social entrepreneurship refers to the adoption of proactive, risk taking propensity and creativity to attain social-based objectives.Thus, it provides new thinking and behaviors that center around opportunity taking to solve social problems (Thompson 2008).Meanwhile, Noruzi et al. (2010) and Greblikaite (2012) have defined social entrepreneurship as social value creation which applied together business expertise and market-based skills to the particular endeavor.Social entrepreneurship encompasses the activities and processes undertaken to discover, define, exploit opportunities in order to enhance social wealth by creating new ventures or managing existing organizations in an innovative manner (Zahra et al. 2009).
The ultimate objective of social entrepreneurship is to tackle the community social problems which been left out by current public and private mechanisms (Sakarya et al. 2012;Jeffery 2005;Noruzi et al 2005 andSeelos &Mair 2005).Therefore, the actions of individuals or organizations that possess the element of risk taking and pro-activeness are considered as social entrepreneurship.According to Zahra (2009), social entrepreneur can be divided into 3 types, namely "Social Bricoleur", "Social Constructionist" and "Social Engineer"." Social Bricoleur" focuses on discovering and addressing small-scale local social needs.Meanwhile, "Social Constructionist" exploits opportunities and market failures in order to introduce reforms and innovation to the broader social system.Finally "Social engineer" recognizes systematic problems within existing social structures and addressed it by introducing revolutionary change.As far as the natural farming project is concerned, KBI and few other government agencies can be described as "Social Bricoleur" as their effort was meant to improve livelihood among marginalized people in selected rural areas.Besides, local people who have participated in the project, also considered as social bricoleur due to their commitment to discover new ways or farming needs with the aid from KBI agents.
Social entrepreneurship can be executed either through the business (market) or the non-business platforms (Nicholls 2006 andNoruzi et al. 2010).The market-based platform refers to specific establishments such as the social business, social enterprises and social firms that aims the attainment of social objectives through market-based activities (Jeffery 2005).According to Alter (2006) social business can be divided into 3 categories based on the level of social and business activities integrations.The embedded model refers to a model in which the social program is also the business activities for particular unit.The second model is the integrated model by which a special income generating division is set up to support financial resource to the social program.The social and business units are considered as the same unit and share the basic resources such as asset and skills.Finally, the external model refers to a model in which different entities were set up to run the social and business activities independently.The business entities will provide financial resource to support the social activities.Meanwhile, Muhammad Yunus (2010) has distinguished the social business into 2 types.Type I refers to the situation whereby the investor invest into a special entity that run ordinary business and contribute the whole generated income to social objectives.Type II comprises of business endeavors either possessed directly or indirectly by the marginalized people.Thus, a Type II social business has derived sustainable income for the targeted group.The natural farming project can be considered as a social business since the aim is to provide sustainable livelihood to rural people through market platforms and behaviors.The participants are expected to sell their garden products to the domestic market to generate household income as well as to consume items.Therefore, natural farming can be identified as a social entrepreneurship venture in the form of embedded social business model and more similar to the Type II social business.

Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO)
Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is critical for business survival and growth as well as to the nations economic prosperity (Lee & Peterson 2000).According to Runyan et al. (2008) small business owners who adopt an entrepreneurial orientation in their business venture are likely to achieve competitive advantages and perform better.Nevertheless, not all small business owners are also entrepreneurs as some did not demonstrate EO in their business conduct (Runyan et al. 2008).Entrepreneurial orientation is featured by tendencies towards innovative, risk taking and proactive characteristics (Lee & Peterson 2000;and Runyan et al. 2008).It describes the process of entrepreneurship or how the venture (project) is undertaken.Firms that act independently, innovative, taking risks, proactive and aggressively compete within their market are regarded as having strong EO, while lacking some or all are identified as weak EO (Lee & Peterson 2000).People with high entrepreneurial orientation shows more effort to expand their venture, whilst small business orientation show concerns only on personal goals as well as to generate the family income.Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is important to all business ventures, including the social business if they were aimed to be successful endeavors.Although natural farming project is not a pure business entity, the project provides sustainable means of living through the marketbased activities.Therefore, the entrepreneurial orientation is also relevant for such social entrepreneurial based project.However, to date, there is a unavailable study of EO in social business context, particularly an agricultural-based of social business.Therefore, the originality of this study lies in this preliminary attempt to relate EO to small scale social business context.In addition, it also investigates few explanatory variables pertaining to the expression of EO by the project participants.
According to Muhammad Yunus (2010), social business must obtain good bottom line in order to serves social objectives sustainably.Therefore, it is posited that EO must be available in order to ensure sustainable attainment of the social objectives.Based on Runyan et al. (2008) there are two types of orientation in managing small scale business venture, comprises of entrepreneurial orientation and small business orientation.The entrepreneurial orientation motive leads toward aggressiveness and growth objective; while small business orientation has a relatively slow or stagnant growth and to remain with quo status.Therefore, we posited that the social business must be conducted with some level of entrepreneurship orientation so to provide sustainable livelihood for rural people.

Individual Differences: Locus of Control & Worldview
Individual characteristics impose a significant impact on human behaviors, project implementation and outcomes (Askhkanasy et al. 2006).People are different in many aspects such as capabilities, knowledge, ability to learn, locus of control and world view.These differences can alter expected reactions, thus making certain idea more applicable in one context rather than the other.Therefore, this study will also examine the relationship between locus of control and worldwiew with EO in social entrepreneurial venture.Eventually entrepreneurial orientation will also have associated with the sustainable livelihood outcomes.The proposed relationship is depicted in Figure 1.Locus of control has been extensively embedded in many entrepreneurship empirical studies as it is one of the most posited traits that predict entrepreneurship behaviors (Kaufmann et al. 1995;and Schjoedt & Shaver 2012).Besides, internal locus of control has been recognizes as a determinant for entrepreneurial behaviors.Locus of control refers to individual belief of how they can exert control over their fate (Schjoedt & Shaver 2012;Nordstrom et al. 2009;Robins 2005;and Kaufmann et al. 1995).Locus of control can be divided into two, comprises of internal and external locus of control (Robbins 2005: 105).People who believe they have control over their destinies are considered as internal locus of control; whereas those who believe in their fates as being controlled by outside forces are identified as external locus of control.Based on Nordstrom et al (2009);and Robins (2005) studies, locus of control was found to have an impact on individual behaviors.The internal locus of control is frequently associated with positive and challenging course of actions and choices; whereas external locus of control demonstrates a relatively passive and unproductive action or choices (Robbins 2005: 106).For example, Nordstrom et al (2009) study found that student with a high internal locus of control shows some degree of likelihood to pursue graduate study.Additionally, a study by Spector et al. (2001) also shows that employees with internal locus of control have been associated with a higher working well-being measure because they are able to control their work environment and eventually their well-being.Such individuals are expected to perform some assertive actions to change the workplace to their own liking or to change jobs that have distorted their well-being.Therefore, we expect that locus of control will have relationship with an entrepreneurial orientation in particular social entrepreneurial context.This has been parallel to the EO definition that reflects a combination of innovative, proactive and risk taking behaviors in the ordinary business venture.We also posited that internal locus of control will lead to an aggressive mode of behaviors that reflect the existence of EO in the particular social entrepreneurial venture.
World view refers to the combination of beliefs, assumptions, attitudes, values and ideas to form a comprehensive model of reality (Schlitz et al. 2013).It also includes formulations and interpretations of past, present and future experience.World view presents a complex conceptual framework by which human being organizes their beliefs about oneself and the world we live in.According to Brunel & Nelson (2000) worldview provide human beings with a sense of purpose, direction and set of goals to guide human actions.Schlitz et al. ( 2013) also highlights that genetic, religion, culture, geographic region and experiences give rise to the development of one world view or the general way of viewing themselves and the world around them.A finding by Ashkanasy et al. (2006) offers interesting fact regarding how individual belief about their world had influenced the ethical or unethical decision making (behaviors).According to Ashkanasy et al. (2006) low cognitive moral manager who believed that their organization condoned unethical behavior made less ethical behaviors.Thus, it reiterates that belief about one's micro and macro world will determine the way they behave in life.Brunel & Nelson (2000) also identified that different gender responded differently to charity advertisement appeal due to worldview differences.As a result, based on Schlitz et al ( 2013) and Brunel & Nelson (2000) studies, we conclude that worldview has profound influence on individual goals and desires, shaping perceptions, motivations, values and preferences both consciously and unconsciously.Therefore, we expect that worldview will have a relationship with EO of local social entrepreneurs.

3.
Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to 87 natural farming participants in Pulau Banggi Sabah and Batang Lupar Sarawak.Both locations are located in the East Malaysia.The questionnaire had consisted of 4 sections aimed to measure benefit of project, entrepreneurial orientation, locus of control and world-view.The measurement of project benefit is measured through 14 items measurement.Meanwhile, locus of control, world view and entrepreneurial orientation were measured by 13, 15 and 13 items of measurement respectively.All respondents gave their response base on the 5 scale points that ranged from (1) strongly disagree to (5) strongly agree.Reliability test had also conducted in order to test item consistency.The reliability test results are shown in Table 1.  1, all measurements have achieved the satisfactory level as all alphas exceed the critical acceptance level of 0.75.For further analysis, all answers were summed to form a single score for each variable.In order to perform cross tabulation analysis, the scores were classified into high and low grouping based on the median value of the score for a particular variable.Scores that lesser than median value are identified as 'low', while the higher are considered as 'high'.Finally, Spearman correlation analysis was adopted to explore the relationships between the variables.

Sample Description
The description of the respondents' characteristics is shown in Table 2. Forty-seven percent (47 %) of the respondents are male and 52 % are female.About 75 % of respondents are married, 21 % singles and 3.4 % are single parents.Most of the respondents aged between 41 to 60 years (54 %) and about 29 % aged between 21 to 40 years old.About 53 % of the respondents have experience in agricultural activities and 53 % also possess other permanent occupation.597 In terms of education level, about 40% are illiterate, while another 26% had only finished their primary school.Another 13% possess a basic certificate of secondary school level (SRP) whereas 17 percent had higher certificate of the secondary school level (SPM).The majority of the respondents (53%) admit that they have some experience in agricultural activities and also have close relatives that involve in agricultural activities.

Analysis 4.
The descriptive statistic is shown in Table 3.The means scores of the respondents are 38.76 for locus of control, 55.74 for worldview, and 48.24 for entrepreneurial orientation.The standard deviation of the variables lies between 4.68 (locus of control) to 7.93 (entrepreneurial orientation).The mode scores also show that all variables have higher modes compared to their means.Therefore, it shows that a relatively high EO dominates the involvement in the natural farming project.Besides, most respondents also reach a relatively high level of locus of control (the high score refers as the internal locus of control) and worldview orientation (the higher score refers as opened-perspective).The result in Table 4 indicates that all residents are from the single population.The significant value lies in the range of 0.103 to 0.505 (p>0.05) for each variable.Therefore, the respondents have been equal to each other in terms of locus of control, worldview, and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) scores.Table 5 presents the central tendency result for each EO item.Based on Table 5 it is interpreted that most participants have sought new ways to perform their gardening tasks.For example, item number 1 (I like to try new gardening/farming technique), 4 (I always try to expand the gardening techniques that were taught to me) and 3 (I like to find new technology to increase my edible outputs) have high means consist of 4.21 with SD= 0.823, 4.15 with SD=0.771 and 4.11 with SD =0.882 respectively.The respondents also tried to increase their market size by selling their product to outside market (mean = 3.64, SD=0.915).Besides, the participants also show intention and interest to expand the size of their gardening project (item no.7 has mean = 3.99, SD= 0.739) and even looking for partners (item no. 13 has mean =3.45, SD = 1.17) and investors to increase their current agriculture scale (item no. 9 has mean=3.14,SD = 1.01).Such proactive and innovative behaviors reflect EO among the respondents.As shown in Table 6, the participants with higher EO have greater potential to receive economic and social benefits due to the significant relationship between economic and social benefit with EO (r for economic benefit = 0.570 at p =0.000; and r for social benefit =0.606 at p=0.000 respectively).The direction of the relationships is positive which reflect higher EO will be followed by attainment of higher natural farming benefits.Table 7 presents the means and standard deviation of each natural farming project benefits.Item 1 through 6 are described as the economic benefit, which comprises of increasing the household income, provide consistent income, allowing the villagers to make household saving and productive usage of household assets.Meanwhile, item 7 through 14 indicates social benefit consist of feel happier and higher self-satisfaction, satisfy basic needs, increase closeness among family and community members, access to healthier and fresh vegetable crops and increase one's agricultural knowledge and skills.The cross tab analysis (Table 8) shows that respondents with internal locus of control possess high score of EO while external locus of control have lower EO.The result shows that people who believed that they possess control over their destiny are likely to demonstrate effort to expand the venture into larger productive scale.Cross tab analysis in Table 9 shows that open worldview have higher EO, while the closed worldview has a relatively low EO.Closed world view represents those who obsessed and rigidly tied to their current situation and environment, while the open world view demonstrate willingness to accept new culture and ideas that promote long term economic and social empowerment.The Spearman correlation result in Table 10 also indicates that locus of control and worldview had significant association with entrepreneurial orientation.Worldview have association with entrepreneurial orientation with r = 0.552, p =0.00, while locus of control have association with EO at r=0.473; p =0.00.

5.
Social entrepreneurship can be conducted through market and non market platform.The ultimate aim of social entrepreneurship is to rectify social problems through different approaches.The natural farming project can be recognized as a social entrepreneurial venture as it allows attainment of sustainable economic and social benefit for rural people.It rectifies rural deprival due to insufficient means of living, especially for people who are lack of capital and opportunities.For example, in this case, most respondents comprise of illiterate and low educated people.Therefore, the social entrepreneurship project allows them to build their livelihood through activity that suit their interest, abilities and skills.In order to be effective, social entrepreneurship must be conducted with an entrepreneurial orientation (EO).The EO will lead towards the growth of the social entrepreneurial venture and expands current household assets for future consumption.
Social entrepreneurship is one of the livelihood platforms that work uniquely mechanism to solve enduring social problems.Social entrepreneurship replicates most of the ordinary entrepreneurial behaviors and characteristics.Social and ordinary entrepreneurship are distinguished by their ultimate aims.The ordinary entrepreneurship aims are to maximize owners' wealth through capital accumulation, while social entrepreneurship aims to gain social well-being through entrepreneurial-like activities.Therefore, EO remains pivotal to social entrepreneurial venture.A social entrepreneurial venture with EO, is likely to dispose growth intention as well as specific effort to realize the growth.Therefore, social entrepreneurial venture that comes along with EO is likely to harvest positive, enduring results that promote social well-being of the targeted group as mentioned in Muhammad Yunus (2010).
As far as EO is concerned, internal locus of control and opened-world of view imposed significant influence on respondents' EO.It reiterates that not everybody can effectively run social entrepreneurship venture, namely the natural farming project, due to individual differences.Thus, "social bricoleurs" with high EO have more ability to achieve productive and sustainable venture.Besides, "social bricoleur" with a universal and open worldview will exercise more EO in their entrepreneurial endeavor.Those with open worldview have tendency to assimilate inputs from outside and look forward to transform irrelevant life principle that hinders betterment of their livelihood.As far as the result is concerned, the social entrepreneurial project must also consider individual differences among their targets.The differences in locus of control and world-view eventually make some project to be successful in particular community but fail when adopted to another community.Therefore, future studies are recommended to replicate this study to other social entrepreneurial projects to further validate the finding.Based on the finding, it is also worth for the project sponsor/manager to nurture positive individual psychological traits, namely the internal locus of control and opened a world-view among its recipients, prior to project engagement.This will ensure the success as well as the sustainability of particular social entrepreneurial projects.

Conclusion 6.
This study shows that social entrepreneurship provides a medium for the realization of Sustainable Livelihood of rural people.Nevertheless, effective social entrepreneurship venture, including the one conducted through the natural farming project, requires some level of entrepreneurial orientation (EO).The findings prove that EO has a relationship with the achievement of project benefits.As far as independent variables are concerned, locus of control and worldview were found to have associations with the respondents' EO level.

Figure
Figure 1: Framework

Table 1 .
Result for Item Consistency Test

Table 3 .
Descriptive Results

Table 4 .
One Sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov Goodness-of-Fit Test Results

Table 5 .
Measure of Central Tendency for Entrepreneurial Orientation

Table 6 .
Spearman Correlation Results for Relationship Between Entrepreneurial Orientation -Economic & Social Benefit Achievement

Table 7 .
Measure of Central Tendency for Project Benefits

Table 8 .
Cross Tabulation, Locus of Control & Entrepreneurial Orientation

Table 9 .
Cross Tabulation, World View & Entrepreneurial Orientation

Table 10 .
Spearman Correlation Results for Relationship Between Locus of Control, Worldview & Entrepreneurial Orientation