Exploring the information behavior and knowledge flow of social entrepreneurs

• Main Authors: LI, MENG-ZHU, 李夢筑
• Other Authors: HUANG, YUAN-HO
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/eq6c5j

碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 圖書資訊學系碩士班 === 106 === The purpose of this study is to understand the characteristics and types of social enterprise, exploring the personality characteristics and values of social entrepreneurs, analysis of social entrepreneurs’ information behavior, problem-solving knowledge, and the act of giving and receiving in knowledge flow. The qualitative interviews were applied in this study. A total of 14 interviewees came from four types of social enterprise, including work integration, community development, social cooperation, and service product. The research results are as follows. First, the personality characteristics and values of social entrepreneurs are as the followings: enthusiastic and rational thinking, willing to help people, caring for social issues, having an optimistic attitude. As for intrinsic motivation, the social entrepreneurs are willing to establish a business by themselves and contribute to the society. As for extrinsic motivation, they have worked for non-profit organizations and social welfare organizations. These social entrepreneurs tried to start up social enterprises due to their past working experience. Second, the results of information behavior and problem solving have shown as follows: the most important information resources come from interpersonal resources, followed by government and network resources, and the least often is scholarly resources. Social entrepreneurs are brave enough to face problems and regard conquering difficulties as the learning process; therefore, they build up their own problem-solving methods to accumulate empirical knowledge. Third, the act of the giving and receiving in knowledge flow have shown that learning relationship types are diverse and domain knowledge is the key to learning. The act of receiving is much more than that of giving in the knowledge flow. The research suggestions are as the followings: First, the communications between the academic community and the industry are encouraged to promote the sound development of social enterprise. Second, the government should promote their policies actively and play a good role for counseling.