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This paper aims to examine how social entrepreneurship (SE) practices give rise to social change in the context of urban Brazil.

The study draws on a broader inductive, ethnographic and iterative practice-based study conducted in three Brazilian non-governmental organizations.

Social change is established through intertwined practices that involve active interplay of ambivalent positive and negative feelings associated with the social mission pursued by the social enterprise; flat organizational structures that encourage participation and taking of ownership among all stakeholders; and focused organizational objectives (social purposes).

The paper presents an analytical framework composed of five propositions that may be used in future research aimed at maturing and refining the understanding of SE. The study also provides a methodological contribution for future studies of new phenomenon and young fields of research that often must rely on inductive methodologies, by demonstrating how an iterative thematic analysis can be used in practice-based studies.

This paper has practical implications directly connected to its social implications, because understanding how social change is achieved may enhance the effectiveness of SE practitioners in bringing desired changes about. Furthermore, the discussion also provided insights for practitioners to reflect upon the paradoxical nature of practices aimed at social change.

The study suggests a set of propositions and an original definition of SE that mitigates conceptual inconsistencies found in literature drawing on empirical data and by incorporating the political lens found in practice theory.

The objective of this study is to review the main studies of social entrepreneurship (SE) in Latin America, to categorize them into four categories. To accomplish this, a bibliometric literature review is carried out based on data from the Web of Science database, to locate the Latin American collection of studies. In this way, the main studies are described and grouped, following a qualitative scheme that allows to substantiate the main findings of the Latin authors. Consequently, the progress made in the literature of the SE for Latin America is corroborated, by visualizing that the SE turns out to be a forceful fact to manage well-being, but that it is faced with an inconsistent development.

We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.