Guest editorial

Citation

Okumus, F., Chen, P.-J., Barber, N.A., Chan, W. and Legrand, W. (2016), "Guest editorial", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 28 No. 6, pp. 1074-1075. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-04-2016-0199

Social entrepreneurship in hospitality

From the editor

This special issue of the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management is devoted to the new and rapidly developing field of social entrepreneurship. It is guest-edited by four scholars in this domain, and researchers wrote the articles included in this special issue from many parts of the world. It is my hope that readers will find the articles interesting, challenging and contributing to the advancement of knowledge. My appreciation and thanks to Po-Ju Chen, Nelson A. Barber, Wilco Chan and Willy Legrand who worked very hard for many months to make this important and timely special issue the best of its kind.

From the Guest Editor

Social entrepreneurship refers to identifying or recognizing a social problem and using entrepreneurial principles to organize, create and manage a venture to achieve a desired social change. Business entrepreneurs typically measure performance in profit and return, whereas social entrepreneurs measure performance in terms of benefit to society. Social entrepreneurship has emerged as a field of considerable interest over the past two decades. However, its rapid growth has resulted in a rather fragmented body of literature, which lacks a set of well-established theories by which to predict and explain social entrepreneurship and a generalizable set of empirical findings from which commonalities about it can be gleaned. In response, this special issue sought studies that build on extant research in the hospitality and tourism field and beyond to develop, apply and/or test theory with the goal of improving our understanding of social entrepreneurship phenomena in the hospitality and tourism field.

The articles included in this special issue have undergone the normal double-blind refereeing process and represent an international assembly of topics and methods. In terms of topics, this issue covers a broad spectrum of related but diverse subjects. Among them are, market approach and framework for developing social entrepreneurship in tourism, sustainability as social marketing, the motivations for social entrepreneurship (including applying Max Weber’s typology of rationality), family social capital and entrepreneurial engagement in hospitality and tourism and social entrepreneurship in tourism (including applying sustainable livelihoods approaches.

This wide range reflects the necessity for connecting social entrepreneurship research to many other disciplines and fields. We have geographical coverage from Europe, America, Australia and Asia, which not only reflects the usual spread of researchers publishing in these fields but also suggests major gaps. It is very refreshing to see a range of qualitative and quantitative methods being used, including environmental scanning, content analysis, observations, interviews, field experiment and visitor surveys. Analytical methods include structural equation modeling.

The contents of a single special issue can only introduce some of the interconnections between social entrepreneurship and hospitality studies. In this special issue, Huan, Yeh and Ma explore the impact of environmental education on visitor intention to green hotels. Laeis and Lemke investigate whether the sustainable livelihoods approach enables analysis of the complex interrelations and interdependencies between social entrepreneurs, destination communities’ livelihood assets and related transforming structures and processes. Mody, Day, Sydnor and Jaffe use Max Weber’s Typology of Rationality to understand the motivations for social entrepreneurship in responsible tourism in India. Campopiano, Minola and Sainaghi seek to gain new insights on the relationship between the perception of bonding and bridging social capital provision by the family and the decision to engage in the entrepreneurial process in the hospitality and tourism industry. Peng and Lin adopt service experience engineering methods within the study to construct an integrated social entrepreneur system in the rural area of Hengshan, Taiwan. Sigala adopts a market approach for developing a framework showing how social enterprises in tourism/hospitality can generate social value and transformation. Ziemke explores the motivations and impact of social entrepreneurs engaged in community events organized during Ireland’s 2013 Gathering. Alegre and Berbegal-Mirabent investigate the factors that turn a social innovation initiative into a success in meeting social needs while achieving economic sustainability. Wang and Yu taking a case study approach to examine the development of social entrepreneurship in China in the context of tourism. Finally, Strobl and Kronenberg investigate the experience of alpine hospitality entrepreneurs and their views of the role, relevance and impact of their networks across the business life cycle.

This was a challenging special issue to assemble, particularly because of the unexpectedly large initial response and the difficulties associated in getting all papers refereed and through the guest-edited process. We greatly thank all authors and referees for their contributions and patience.