Service leadership and values ??towards work as attributes of the social entrepreneur: an exploration in trainees and business students in the State of Mexico

The social entrepreneur brings the mindset, techniques, effort and dedication of entrepreneurship to solving social problems. Although the term is now clear, it is still difficult to define its characteristic traits in the initial context of the Mexican social economy. The aim of this research study was to identify whether the relation between values toward labor and servant leadership would delineate the profile of social entrepreneurs. This is a quantitative study using a self-administered questionnaire to a sample of 338 volunteer subjects (train-ees and business students) from a Mexican public university. Based on descriptive results, we could confirm that the social values of self-transcendence and openness to change prevail in the profile of social entrepreneurs. The findings showed that the values of self-transcendence and openness to change predict servant leadership (empowerment, altruism and humility). Self-transcendence was a better predictor of servant leadership than openness to change, or else, social and professional skills weigh more than autonomous and renewed thinking. The social value of this research lies in maintaining social values and servant leadership indissolu-bly in the social entrepreneur profile to support the challenge of balancing the social mission and self-financing in environments where resources are scarce and social needs press.