Entrepreneurship in social: Brazilian university students toward a career with purpose

Purpose Social entrepreneurship (SE) presents specificities that the entrepreneur must address. Entrepreneurial intention (EI) and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in SE should reflect specific characteristics of behavior. The purpose of this study is to identify the intention of Brazilian university students to undertake SE, having individual social EO (individual entrepreneurial orientation (IEO)-social) as their predictive behavior. Design/methodology/approach This paper collected study data from Brazilian university students. To test the study’s hypotheses, this paper used confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation model, partial least squares and generalized linear regression model. Findings The results indicate that Brazilian university students positively respond to their intention to become social entrepreneurs in the future, regardless of gender, courses or types of universities. In line with the literature, IEO-Social proved to be a strong predictor of EI-social. Research limitations/implications This study was limited to understanding EI-social from IEO-Social. Besides, its sample is non-probabilistic, therefore, the findings of this study cannot be generalized. Practical implications The results encourage the inclusion of SE in entrepreneurial education programs. They guide the involvement of students from different areas of knowledge in activities aimed at higher education. Social implications Evidence indicates that including the SE theme in entrepreneurial education programs proves to be valuable for opening purposeful career opportunities for students. Originality/value The study contributes to eliminating the gap in studies on EI-social in Brazilian university students. It also offers the IEO-social scale, theoretically constructed and with superior psychometric quality.