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The purpose of this study is to assess the current prevalence of empirical research in the field of social entrepreneurship. Further, we identify secondary datasets and explain their relative strengths and weaknesses for use by social entrepreneurship scholars.

The authors conducted a search of academic articles in the EBSCO and ProQuest databases mentioning social entrepreneurship, social venture(s), social enterprise(s), or social entrepreneur(s) in the title, abstract, or keywords published from 2009 to 2013. Papers were coded and analyzed based upon the nature of their methods.

We find that while qualitative studies are still the norm, quantitative methods are increasing, thanks to the creation of large-scale datasets and the use of analysis techniques new to the field. Three such large-scale datasets – the PSED II, GEM, and nonprofit tax collections – are discussed in depth. We find several strengths and weaknesses for each dataset, yet each provides social entrepreneurship scholars with fruitful opportunities.

Through a deeper understanding of empirical research and sources of social entrepreneurship data, scholars may be more attracted to social entrepreneurship, better equipped to conduct high-quality research and publish in high-quality outlets. Moreover, by moving beyond case studies and small-sample research to engaging larger pools of subjects and producing more generalizable findings, social entrepreneurship scholars will have the ability to impact a much broader scope of practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to identify tensions that are emerging in the invention and implementation of social innovation by social entrepreneurial teams and highlights elements that influence the type of tension encountered.

Four cases are selected theoretically, studied individually, and compared to one another to identify tensions and patterns of tensions.

The findings reveal the predominant tensions related to goals and identity during social innovation invention and those related to time and knowledge during social innovation implementation. The size of the entrepreneurial team, the nature of the social innovation, and the interest orientation – that is, the overlap between entrepreneurial team members and beneficiaries – are found to play a role in the type of tensions encountered and their content.

The chosen research approach limits the generalizability of the research results. Replication in other settings and with other types of social innovation is therefore encouraged.

In contrast to most existing studies, this research focuses on nascent social innovation projects borne by teams. It proposes that social-business tensions are not necessarily predominant in social innovation management. It suggests the importance of interest orientation as an underestimated factor in the study of social entrepreneurship.

Recent interest in social entrepreneurship among young people has led to a heightened interest in new research. Few studies, however, have yet to investigate motivators of involvement, particularly from countries that are new to social entrepreneurship. The current study set out to better understand this phenomenon among young social entrepreneurs in Malaysia. In-depth one-to-one interviews with 12 young entrepreneurs were carried out to collect the data. Four themes and ten sub-themes emerged from the interviews, including early life experience (childhood experience and family experience), inspiration from clients and colleagues (interactions with the target group and exposure to social entrepreneurs), work-related experience (volunteer experience and job-related experience), and personal meaning (contribute back to society, desire for more meaning in life, and personal passions). The implications for policy-makers and interested parties are outlined in regard to enhancing participation and interest among youth for social entrepreneurship.

Purpose: Entrepreneurial teams are one of the most crystallized forms of collaboration in the generically collective dynamics underpinning social entrepreneurship. Despite their quantitative prevalence, social entrepreneurial teams (SETs) remain quite absent from the scholarly literature. This chapter aims to develop a research agenda addressing this gap. Methodology/Approach: This chapter first reviews the scarce literature dealing with this subject and develops an operationalizable definition of SETs. Next, it confronts current knowledge on entrepreneurial teams with the specific context of social entrepreneurship to introduce and discuss main topics of investigation on SETs. Findings: Six topics are suggested to have a high potential for developing knowledge on SETs: formation, size and extended team, gender, decision-making and leadership, identity, and turnover. Research Implications: This chapter frames these research avenues within a developmental stages perspective with the aim to contribute to help form and maintain effective SETs. Originality/Value of Chapter: This research has implications for scholars as it defines SETs as a distinct object for research, which allows extending knowledge on collaborative dynamics in social entrepreneurship, but also on entrepreneurial teams in general. The suggested research agenda and its orientation toward the development of effective SETs should be a springboard for future research on this subject.

This paper aims to investigate the motivations of social entrepreneurs in East Africa to create a social enterprise and their identified links to successful social entrepreneurship in East Africa.

The authors employed a qualitative method by performing thematic analysis on a set of interviews on social entrepreneurs from East Africa who are Ashoka fellows.

The findings suggest that intense personal experiences linked to past-life events as well as a high achievement orientation towards improving livelihoods and creating impact serve as key triggers for social entrepreneurship. Successful entrepreneurship focusses on system change at national and local levels. Their success is also seen when the social entrepreneurs have achieved their mission and are no longer needed; thus, they become irrelevant. The paper discusses the implications of these findings on the model used for sustainable social entrepreneurship in East Africa.

Based on an exploratory research on Ashoka fellows, the study adds insight to their motivations and success which can be used in a wider scale study of the same.

The authors advance the scarce empirical research on East African social entrepreneurs, link success factors of social entrepreneurship to a recent framework on motivation to engage in social entrepreneurship and stimulate further research in the area. The study contributes to the literature on social entrepreneurship by linking success factors of social entrepreneurship to a recent framework on motivation to engage in social entrepreneurship.

This study aims to examine the influences of causation strategy, entrepreneurial orientation and social orientation on the social enterprise’s (SE) financial performance and social achievement.

The partial least square structural equational modelling technique was used to analyse survey data collected from Malaysian and Singaporean SEs (n = 96).

The findings have important guidance for policymakers, social entrepreneurs and researchers interested in promoting the growth and impact of SEs in emerging regions.

This study offers several practical implications for social entrepreneurs who want to achieve both financial and social success.

There is no widely accepted performance framework for SE. Most research in SE is descriptive and conceptual in nature. Larger data sets from the nascent ecology of SE are even scarcer. This study developed and examined a performance framework specifically designed to meet the needs of SEs operating in the emerging region.

This paper aims to address essential questions regarding social entrepreneurial intentions. Do traits such as perceived social impact, social worth and social network influence, social entrepreneurial intentions among the young populous generation of Pakistan? To get a deeper insight, this paper further raises questions regarding the relationship of these predictors and social entrepreneurial intentions with empathy which is considered as a key determinant and a distinguishing trait to become a social entrepreneur.

This paper involves a quantitative research design using a partial least square structural equation modeling approach to measure the effects of the structural model. For this, a cross-sectional survey was conducted with a purposive sample of 247 university students from Pakistan.

Results showed a positive relationship between antecedents and social entrepreneurial intentions. Overall analysis exhibited social worth as a dominant trait and social network as the least influencing trait to impact social entrepreneurial intentions.

It will help micro and macro-level policymakers including government officials and NGOs and educators to create awareness and provide support and encouragement to individuals who aim to initiate social enterprise.

The present study makes significant contributions to the social entrepreneurship literature, as it is one of the first academic studies on social entrepreneurial intentions in Pakistan. This paper enriches the theoretical foundation by assessing the influence of perceived social impact, social worth and social network on social entrepreneurial intentions. Also, the relationship of Empathy with each of these antecedents is examined for the first time in the social entrepreneurial intentions context which is a valuable contribution both theoretically and practically.

This study aims to reach academic consensus on key factors and boundaries used in defining the concepts of “social entrepreneurship” (SEsh), “social entrepreneur” (SE), and “social enterprise” (SEV). This study also explores the complex relationships among social/business enterprises, definitional categories and factors, missions, and impacts on effectiveness of practices and organizing for venture success.

Content analysis is conducted on articles published from 1998 to 2016 in peer-reviewed academic journals in the fields of management and organization. Furthermore, 80 articles are obtained and analyzed in terms of factors and frequently used terms for unified definitions and their intertwined linkages.

The unifying factors for the definitions of SEsh, SE, and SEV include primary mission and processes and resources. Strong linkages are observed between SEsh and actors, SE and characteristics, and SEV and organizational form. Results indicate that definitional categories and factors share numerous joint terms that can be used to propose unified definitions. This study identifies the effective interactions of variables among social mission, capabilities to manage resources and processes, entrepreneurial characteristics of actors, and forms of ventures in a process that provides potential for organizational sustainability and impact maximization.

This paper contributes to research by identifying clear and agreed-upon factors and traits as boundaries to propose definitions that can advance the legitimacy of social entrepreneurship as an academic field worthy of future exploration.

The findings emphasize social mission that achieves public benefits while preventing mission drift. Economic value and choice of organizational form can advance the fulfillment of objectives and governance practices. This study also presents the key influencing factors at various stages of an entrepreneurial process to determine how these concepts interact to increase the likelihood of organizational emergence and survival.

This work is the first to systematically review management and organizational literature on the key factors and terms that constitute the distinct definitions of SEsh, SE, and SEV and help clarify their complex relations in an entrepreneurial process.

The aim of this systematic literature review (SLR) is to map out the current state of the research on collaboration in the context of social entrepreneurship organisations (SEOs), synthesise this line of research and advance a research agenda.

A SLR of 40 scientific articles found in the Scopus and Web of Science databases built the foundation for an analysis of the state-of-the-art of the research addressing the interplay of SEOs and collaboration. This area of research has been very recent since the selected articles have been published since 2005 and more than half of which have appeared since 2017.

The findings suggest that collaboration is increasingly perceived as a crucial entrepreneurial activity and process for SEOs. The results indicate that collaboration is a vibrant and rapidly growing line of research which spans different fields of study, contexts, varied theoretical perspectives and multiple units of analysis. Furthermore, a total of five key research themes are identified pertaining to collaboration in the context of SEOs, such as motivations and strategies of collaboration, its antecedents, the interplay of institutional logics and tensions arising in collaboration, the impact of collaboration on the mission of SEOs and collaborative processes and practices.

To lend structure to this fragmented field of inquiry, this study systematically reviews and synthesises research on collaboration in the context of SEOs. In doing so, the study reveals that this line of research is under-researched, offering a significant scope for further scrutiny.

This study aims to understand how social experience influences social entrepreneurial (SE) intentions through different types of self-referent beliefs and how gender affects this mechanism.

To test this study’s conceptual model, the authors conducted an online survey and recruited respondents via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. This study’s analysis is based on 743 responses. This study used structural equation modeling to test the main hypotheses, conducted decomposition tests using the bootstrapping method to test mediation effects via self-referent beliefs and executed multi-group analyses to examine gender-moderated mediation effects.

The results confirm that social experience significantly influences all three types of self-referent beliefs (entrepreneurial self-efficacy, SE self-efficacy and self-esteem). Furthermore, the mediating relationship across social experience, self-efficacies, and SE intentions is moderated by gender, as the relationships between social experience and self-efficacies are stronger for women than for men.

A clear gender gap exists in the way how social experience affects perceptual variables (self-referent beliefs), providing a practical suggestion to reduce the perceptual gender gap in social entrepreneurial contexts. This study also reveals the mediating mechanism across social experience, self-efficacies and SE intentions, also highlighting the importance of domain specific self-efficacies. This study’s findings support and extend Milliken’s (1987) framing of three distinct types of uncertainty to explain how individuals form SE intentions.