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Scholars have applied a number of theoretical perspectives to enhance understanding of social entrepreneurial opportunities, and have most recently turned to the lens of critical realism. Although this metatheoretical perspective overcomes some problems with previous views and helps to identify the essence of a construct, the level of abstraction required by this approach leaves unanswered questions related to how social entrepreneurs leverage opportunities. The purpose of this paper is to create a framework to describe social entrepreneurial opportunities in a way that facilitates action and decision-making by social entrepreneurs.

Through adapting Davidsson's (2015) deconstruction of the opportunity construct and using it to inform the pragmatist view of entrepreneurs as theory-testing scientists, this paper develops a framework for understanding social entrepreneurial opportunities. The paper explores the idea that social opportunities are composed of external enablers, a new social venture idea, and social opportunity confidence, and integrates the existing literature on social opportunities into this framework.

Using the framework developed, the authors advance a template of questions, hypotheses and quasi-experimental means that social entrepreneurs can use to determine how to move forward in social opportunity actualization. The authors also expand three categories of research questions that scholars may explore to extend the practical and theoretical understanding of social opportunities.

This work is among the first to adopt the pragmatist lens to elucidate social opportunities in a practical way. It takes an important first step in offering a means for social entrepreneurs to investigate when or where the requisite components of a social entrepreneurial opportunity may exist. Furthermore, it advances the pragmatist perspective of social opportunities by using Davidsson's model to explain the components of theories about what may or may not be a social opportunity.

This study aims at developing an understanding of action pathways when adverse events force micro-enterprises to change their operations.

This qualitative study draws upon empirical data collected from entrepreneurs facing the same adverse event—the COVID-19 pandemic—to build theory on different types of actions that micro-enterprises take and what leads up to these actions.

The findings suggest three types of action pathways. The first pathway is set off by losses stretched out over time and generates open-ended actions. The second pathway is set off by immediate losses and generates survival-oriented actions. The third pathway is set off by potential long-term losses and generates developmental-oriented actions.

This study offers novel insights into action pathways in response to adverse events, heterogeneity of such actions and processes that precede the choice of actions. It also expands the existing literature by showcasing actual actions instead of desired actions, which have already been extensively studied.

Entrepreneurs prioritise and act on purposeful endeavours instigated to actions by the visions of profits and benefits in the perceived opportunities. In the state of maximum entropy, with disorderliness and disequilibrium, entrepreneurs select the preferred pathway, through the profit-sensing mechanism, with the best probability of success to bet on. Therefore, this paper unpacks the forces at work in the mechanism to explain how entrepreneurs respond to opportunity and interpret the signals to coalesce into organised actions.

This research is primarily a conceptual paper on entrepreneurial action and the mechanism leading to that action. It refers to thermodynamic principles and biological cases to explain the forces at work using mostly analogical comparisons and similarities.

This paper aims to present an alternative theoretical scaffolding for entrepreneurship researchers to explore non-rational entrepreneurial behaviours and actions in uncertain, unstable and non-equilibrium environments, thereby creating new and competing hypotheses under the backdrop of adaptive evolution and thermodynamics phenomena.

The discussion featuring instinctively and naturally forming responses cannot fully explain the real entrepreneurial action as there is an element of free will and choices that are not discussed. While strategic choice and free-will shape decisions, they are preceded first by the attraction of the gradients and the biased motion in the direction of profit-attractant.

There remain essential links and issues not addressed in this “natural science”, constituting life science and physical science, oriented entrepreneurship research and exploration. Conceptualising opportunity-as-artefact and entrepreneurship as design, significant incidences of entrepreneurial actions can be explained by the presence of gradients stimulating entrepreneurial actions.

This viewpoint of information causality in opportunity-as-artefact casts a new look at the venerable question of what causes entrepreneurial actions. Shane and Venkataraman brought into focus this conversation, initiating the conceptual definition of opportunity. To have entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial opportunities must come first. Figuring the signals arising from these opportunities and cueing entrepreneurs to action is the main focus of this study.

Considering the “mechanism” at work and the thermodynamical forces at play, the entrepreneurial design process appears to hold considerable promise for future research development.

This study aims to investigate how social entrepreneurial role models influence social entrepreneurial self-efficacy, social entrepreneurial intent and social entrepreneurial action, with moral obligation as a moderator.

A cross-sectional survey of 261 pupils in the South African province of the Eastern Cape was used in the research study. Structural equation modeling was used to test hypotheses.

The research revealed that having social entrepreneurial role models has a positive impact on both social entrepreneurial self-efficacy and social entrepreneurial intent. In addition, a connection was found between social entrepreneurial intent and entrepreneurial action. The influence of moral obligation was found to be a positive and a significant moderator. Moreover, the association between social entrepreneurial role models and social entrepreneurial intent was mediated by social entrepreneurial self-efficacy.

The findings are not generalizable to nonstudent samples because students constituted the sample for gathering data. Future study therefore requires considering nonstudents to generalize the outcomes. This research should be replicated in other South African provinces and other developing countries for comparative outcomes.

Since social entrepreneurial role models have been practically linked to social entrepreneurship intent and entrepreneurial efficacy, understanding the factors that influence student’s decision to start a social enterprise is critical in South Africa to develop targeted interventions aimed at encouraging young people to start new businesses. Policymakers, society and entrepreneurial education will all benefit from the findings.

This study contributes to bridging the knowledge gap as it investigates how social entrepreneurial role models influence social entrepreneurial self-efficacy, social entrepreneurial intent and social entrepreneurial action, with moral obligation as a moderator. Encouraging social entrepreneurship among South African youth would also help address societal issues. This is a pioneering study in the context of an emerging economy such as South Africa, where social entrepreneurship is so integral.

The role of entrepreneurship education in promoting entrepreneurial actions remains unclear. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the logic of different types of entrepreneurship education and the effect of learning characteristics in promoting entrepreneurial actions among student entrepreneurs in the higher education setting.

The study employs a quantitative approach involving the use of survey data collected via an Internet tool. The constructs of variables are measured using previously tested scales. The data were analysed using partial least squares modelling because it can handle formative and reflective constructs in the same model and is capable of testing for moderation.

The findings illustrate that voluntary entrepreneurship education generates learning outcomes in terms of students' entrepreneurial actions, which is important because without action, a venture will never be launched. This is especially so if students show a deep learning orientation, while mastery motivation showed a significant and negative moderating effect. This is not the case for compulsory entrepreneurship education.

Embedded in construal level theory, this paper offers knowledge that can help to advance entrepreneurship education research (1) by uncovering the role of different types of entrepreneurship education interventions, (2) by considering students' entrepreneurial actions as the dependent variable and (3) by unravelling the role of students' learning characteristics in the efficacy of entrepreneurship education interventions. By doing this, the study addresses recent repeated calls for more fine-grained research focused on how university students learn in entrepreneurship in higher education and its effects.

This paper aims to explain the occurrence of sustainable entrepreneurship in the underresearched sub-Saharan Africa context and to improve the understanding of how effectuation manifests in this context.

This study uses a qualitative research approach based on multiple case studies. Responses were sourced from owners, employees, suppliers, the community and customers of sustainable entrepreneurial firms. Data collection methods included in-depth interviews, document reviews and observations. The Gioia analytical approach was used.

Overall, the authors find the concept of effectuation to be well-suited to capturing the processes through which individuals with limited means seek to engage in sustainable entrepreneurship. The authors also identify three pervasive practices that are key to understanding effectuation in the developing country context: complementation of indigenous knowledge with modern science, compassion and pluriactivity.

This study underscores the importance of co-creation, diversification of revenue sources and the role of emotional awareness and interpersonal skills in entrepreneurial endeavors.

This study, therefore, contributes new knowledge about the mechanisms through which entrepreneurs faced with resource constraints use control as opposed to prediction strategies to exploit sustainable entrepreneurship opportunities. In so doing, this study contributes to entrepreneurship theory by proposing the integration of cognitive and affective dimensions in realizing sustainable entrepreneurship goals.

The novel coronavirus (nCoV) pandemic, and the challenges of social distancing, proffer a unique opportunity to re-explore the role of social network support in entrepreneurship. Applying social support theory and gender schema theory, this study aims to examine the gender-based differences in prospective entrepreneurs' reliance on their social networks in their entrepreneurial journey amid social turmoil.

The authors collected two-stage primary survey data of prospective entrepreneurs within the pandemic's timeframe from Science and Technology Parks in Iran, one of the first countries to deal with the first, second and third waves of the 2019-nCoV virus.

The findings demonstrate that female entrepreneurs rely more strongly on their social network support for guidance and encouragement, which positively affects their opportunity intention. While this effect is also seen in men, the effect size is smaller. Also, prospective female entrepreneurs were generally more dissuaded from opportunity intention by the severe perceived environmental uncertainty of the crisis than were men.

Prior research on the interaction between social network support and opportunity intentions has been examined in the context of socio-economic normalcy. The authors test whether, how and why these interactions hold in times of crisis, with especial attention to the mechanisms of experienced stress, perceived environmental uncertainty and idea innovativeness.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the insights of founding entrepreneurs to understand what they consider as motivating factors in their decision to act upon entrepreneurial intentions. Using this information, the entrepreneurial trigger event influence was conceptualized, and a scale developed for use in subsequent testable models.

Qualitative and quantitative techniques were used to construct an instrument that measures the presence and influence of entrepreneurial behavior triggers. The concept of triggering events was explored with 14 founding entrepreneurs. Themes emerged from this enquiry process which informed the development of four primary entrepreneurial triggering events. Over 600 entrepreneurs participated in the study. Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify dimensions of entrepreneurial triggers and was tested using confirmatory factor analysis.

Entrepreneurs perceive that personal fulfillment and job dissatisfaction serve as two significant trigger events which will lead individuals to engage in entrepreneurial behaviors. This research supports theorizing that suggests entrepreneurial trigger events have influence in motivating individuals to act upon entrepreneurial intentions and some trigger events may have more influence toward behavior than others.

This research is subject to multiple limitations. Trigger events were limited to those identified in literature and the interviews. Most entrepreneurs participating in this study were from a limited geographic region. The entrepreneurs in this study reported their triggering event based on their memory which could have been affected by inaccurate recall or memory bias. No attempt has been made to model the comparative effects of the different variables on entrepreneurial outcomes. Finally, the entrepreneurial trigger event instrument did not measure the participant's demographics or psychographics which could have played a role in the influence of reported trigger event.

This study extends previous research that trigger events serve as catalysts for entrepreneurial behavior. Findings support the premise that different types of triggers have different levels of influence as antecedents of entrepreneurial behavior. Specifically, positive, negative, internal and external entrepreneurial triggering events were explicated. The Entrepreneurial Trigger Event Scale created to facilitate this study enables researchers to explore the effects of types and perceived influences of precipitating trigger events on the intentions of the individual that result in entrepreneurial behavior. The optimized instrument further expanded Shapero's (1975) proposed theory of the origins of entrepreneurial behavior.

The development of a scale provides researchers with the opportunity to include the influence of entrepreneurial trigger events, as perceived by entrepreneurs, in future testable models. Entrepreneurial development organizations can use the knowledge to assist in understanding when potential entrepreneurs may act upon entrepreneurial intentions. Information gained can have significant implications for understanding the initiation of entrepreneurial behavior, entity establishment and business growth.

This research responds to a call for investigation into the influence of entrepreneurial trigger events on a person's decision to act upon entrepreneurial intentions. It is an early attempt to conceptualize a relevant construct of entrepreneurial trigger event influence and to develop a scale for use in empirical testing. It is distinguished by using planned behaviors, push and pull, motivation and drive reduction theories. These theories are applied to the perceptions of successful entrepreneurs to develop a construct and validate it.

Entrepreneurial trait and behaviour approaches are used to identify differing entrepreneurial profiles. Specifically, this study aims to determine which entrepreneurial competencies (ECs) can predict entrepreneurial action (EA) for distinct profiles, such as male versus female, start-up versus established and for entrepreneurs within different age groups and educational levels.

The research was conducted using a survey method on a large sample of 1,150 South African entrepreneurs. Chi-squared automatic interaction detection (CHAID) algorithms were used to build decision trees to illustrate distinct entrepreneurial profiles.

Each profile has a different set of ECs that predict EA, with a growth mindset being the most significant predictor of action. Therefore, this study confirms that a “one-size-fits-all” approach cannot be applied when profiling entrepreneurs.

From a pedagogical standpoint, different combinations of these ECs for each profile provide priority information for identification of appropriate candidates (e.g. the highest potential for success) and training initiatives, effective pedagogies and programme design (e.g. which individual ECs should be trained and how should they be trained).

Previous work has mostly focused on demographic variables and included a single sample to profile entrepreneurs. This study maintains much wider applicability in terms of examining profiles in a systematic way. The large sample size supports quantitative analysis of the comparisons between different entrepreneurial profiles using unconventional analyses. Furthermore, as far as can be determined, this represents the first CHAID conducted in a developing country context, especially South Africa, focusing on individual ECs predicting EA.

Prior research has drawn from entrepreneurial practice to conceptualize a variety of discreet narrative types. Research has also demonstrated that narratives are a practical and useful tool for entrepreneurs in many stages of the entrepreneurial process. This paper proposes a new narrative, shared narrative, and a conceptual model for how entrepreneurs might build such a narrative that is strategic in nature.

First, the authors review the types of narrative and introduce shared narrative as an account that narrativizes both the entrepreneur and relevant stakeholders. Then, integrating theoretical concepts from constitutive rhetoric and value co-creation, the authors introduce a conceptual framework as a three-stage process guide for entrepreneurs to build shared narratives for strategic stakeholder engagement. Leveraging the power of shared roles and salient values as the key to pre-story building process, the intended audience of the story (i.e. consumer, investor) is present from the inception of the story and integral to its success.

The authors assert that entrepreneurs need to adopt a shared narrative approach for strategic purposes. Further, the development of a shared narrative begins at the pre-story process of co-creation, focused on identifying the roles and values entrepreneurs share with their various stakeholders. Incorporating these shared roles and salient values into the entrepreneurial narrative will result in a narrative that is compelling, authentic and adaptable to different stages of the entrepreneurial process and for multiple stakeholder audiences. Post-story, this authentic narrative will result in higher levels of engagement from both the audience and the entrepreneur in the form of reciprocal action.

This paper proposes a new narrative and provides a structured process to support entrepreneurs in building shared narratives for strategic engagement with a wide range of stakeholders.