Navigating Spirit- And Rational-Driven Capacities: A Qualitative Study of Life-Altering Shifts in Motivation, Meaning, and Purpose Among Founders of Social Enterprises, With Implications for Interconnectedness and a Civic Spirituality

Excerpt from Abstract

This qualitative study explores the subjective experience of shifts in motivations, meaning, and purpose among a distinct subset of social entrepreneurs who left a conventional and successful work life to heed a different call. Each founded a social enterprise to address facets of systemic injustice, primarily related to injustice witnessed in the lives of others. Their shifts can be described as life-altering convergences of spirit- and rational-driven capacities, from which emerge insights into how individuals navigate a broadened understanding of self in the world.

Aligned with goals of future forming research as described by Kenneth J. Gergen (2014), the study employs research as “worldmaking,” drawing attention to existing ways of life that appear to reflect an emerging consciousness. A basic qualitative research method is used that includes semi-structured in-depth interviews to elicit subjective experience of personal shifts in meaning and purpose.

Findings reveal relationships among vulnerability-on-behalf-of-others, de-centering the self, increased awareness of bias, seeing oneself in the other, and individual efforts and states of awareness that can foster activation of a dynamic of interconnectedness.

This study will be of interest to scholars, practitioners, and business leaders drawn to spheres of: personal development, engaged self-transcendence, dynamics of human interconnectedness, civic spirituality, global ethics, and future studies.

© 2022 by Camille A. Kolles