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The paper aims to explore the roles and impact of design in incubating and accelerating social enterprises. It aims to understand design’s influence on social enterprise ecosystems and in improving outcomes for social enterprises.

The study used an exploratory, qualitative approach, using case studies and interviews. The comparative case-study methodology was applied to evaluate the influence of design on the development of social enterprises in the UK and South Korea and identify critical issues in their utilisation of design. Empirical data included: in-depth case studies of design utilisation practices (UK = 6; South Korea = 15) and design applications (UK = 2; South Korea = 2) for the growth of social enterprise and its ecosystem; 27 social enterprise/design experts (UK = 17; South Korea = 10); and 22 social enterprises (UK = 12; South Korea = 10). Content and thematic analysis were used to synthesise the findings.

Findings demonstrate the differing influences of design on social enterprise, from improving products/services and business models to enhancing social enterprise ecosystem support and networks. Future directions are suggested for applying design for social enterprise growth, business stage development and systematising interactions between the social enterprise and design sectors.

The research is based on case studies from only two countries. Further, the adoption of working definitions of social enterprise in the countries may result in the research underestimating the heterogeneity of social enterprise.

The findings contribute to optimising efficient ecosystem development to improve social enterprise competitiveness and innovation.

This paper establishes a research foundation on design for social enterprise, offering theoretical and practical insights into its impact on growth.

This chapter examines the concepts of race and racism, critically reviewing their historical and contemporary applications in everyday life as well as in academic and policy debates. Racism has been extensively researched, with various theories and conceptualisations developed across social science. However, there is a great deal of disagreement regarding its nature, contemporary significance and empirical validation. This chapter examines these and attempts to synthesise some of the common definitions of racism provided in the literature. It explores related concepts and underlying themes pertaining to expressions of race and racism. Furthermore, it unpacks current knowledge about racial issues and discusses recent advances in the conceptual understanding of various forms of racism. It also elucidates the social, political and analytical applications of racism as a concept and the significance of racism in contemporary societies. The chapter concludes by highlighting how racism is a dynamic phenomenon, continuously evolving with the social, political and technological transformations in contemporary societies.

This study aims to provide a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of social exclusion research, examining its evolution and identifying emerging trends and influential contributions in the field.

Using bibliometric and thematic analysis of 3,041 Scopus database documents, the study uses tools like VOSviewer for network analysis and Biblioshiny for trend analysis, focusing on publication patterns, author contributions and thematic clusters.

The findings reveal significant growth in social exclusion research since 1979, highlighting key contributions from diverse academic fields. Notable trends include the rise of digital exclusion and environmental justice themes. The study identifies leading authors, institutions and countries contributing to this field, along with highly cited documents that have shaped the discourse on social exclusion.

The study acknowledges its reliance on Scopus data and suggests incorporating other databases for future research. It highlights the need to explore emerging topics and address literature gaps.

This paper presents a unique bibliometric perspective on social exclusion research, underscoring its interdisciplinary nature and evolving focus. The study’s comprehensive approach offers valuable insights into the field’s trajectory, contributing to a deeper understanding of social exclusion phenomena.

The purpose of this study is to provide an in-depth understanding of the B2B customers’ perspective regarding salespeople’s social media use.

The study adopts a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews with 26 key informants performing their job in customer role in various industries.

The authors inductively identify five themes regarding the B2B customers’ perspective of social media use in B2B selling. These themes allow for valuable implications for social selling activities and expected outcomes.

Against a growing body of literature on drivers, best practices and outcomes of social media use by B2B salespeople, less attention has been paid to the customer’s side. The authors extend current research by providing a more complete picture of social selling activities and expected outcomes.

This study aims to examine adolescents’ social media environment connected to unhealthy food marketing. As social media have become a ubiquitous part of young people’s everyday lives, marketers have also shifted their focus to these channels. Literature on this phenomenon is still scarce and often takes a quite narrow view of the role of marketing in social media. Furthermore, the experiences of the adolescents are seldom considered.

Using a sociocultural approach and netnographic methodology, this study presents findings from a research project conducted in Finland. The data consist of both social media material and focus group interviews with adolescents.

The findings elaborate on unhealthy food marketing to adolescents in social media from two perspectives: sociocultural representations of unhealthy foods in social media marketing and social media influencers connecting with adolescents.

The study broadens and deepens the current understanding of unhealthy food marketing to adolescents taking place in social media. The study introduces a novel perspective to the topic by looking at it as a sociocultural phenomenon.

Drawing on the social presence theory, this study aims to explore how supplier–customer social media interactions influence supplier observers’ trust in the customers and what mechanisms contribute to variation in trust experience.

A total of 36 semi-structured interviews were conducted with Chinese suppliers using WeChat for business-to-business interactions. Data were analyzed in three steps: open coding, axial coding and selective coding.

Findings reveal that varied trust is based not only on the categories of social presence of interaction – whether social presence is embedded in informative interactions – but also on the perceived selectivity in social presence. Observer suppliers who experience selectivity during social and affective interactions create a perception of hidden information and an unhealthy relationship atmosphere, and report a sense of emotional vulnerability, thus eroding cognitive and affective trust.

The findings contribute new understandings to social presence theory by exploring the social presence of interactions in a supplier–supplier–customer triad and offer valuable insights into business-to-business social media literature by adopting a suppliers’ viewpoint to unpack the mechanisms of how social presence of interaction positively and negatively influences suppliers’ trust and behavioral responses.

The study is positioned at the crossroads of transformative social marketing and social innovation literature through the lens of participatory design (PD). This exploratory study aims to explore how social enterprises in India engage economically marginalized people in transformative social marketing and innovation for sustainable development through PD.

The study includes a case study with a matched pairs analysis approach. The data analysis reports three themes depicting the role of PD in different stages of the social innovation process (codiscovery, codesign and scaling-up), the challenges faced in the process and the outcomes of the PD process.

The authors propose that social enterprises can act as sustainable development catalysts for more inclusive sustainable development through their proactive and creative uses of PD. Still, PD also has limitations for addressing the challenges stemming from marginalized contexts, which requires effective social marketing strategies to overcome.

The study contributes to the emerging dialogue on PD with marginalized users and widens the scope of studies on transformative social marketing and innovation. The findings also provide practical insights for PD practitioners on how designers can learn from diverse PD practices in the context of economically marginalized people.

The purpose of this study is to comprehend how AI aids marketers in engaging customers and generating value for the company by way of customer engagement (CE). CE is a popular area of research for scholars and practitioners. One area of research that could have far-reaching ramifications with regard to strengthening CE is artificial intelligence (AI). Consequently, it becomes extremely important to understand how AI is helping the marketer reach customers and create value for the firm via CE.

A detailed approach using both systematic review and bibliometric analysis was used. It involved identifying key research areas, the most influential authors, studies, journals, countries and organisations. Then, a comprehensive analysis of 50 papers was carried out in the four identified clusters through co-citation analysis. Furthermore, a content analysis of 42 articles for the past six years was also conducted.

Emerging themes explored through cluster analysis are CE concepts and value creation, social media strategies, big data innovation and significance of AI in tertiary industry. Identified themes for content analysis are CE conceptualisation, CE behaviour in social media, CE role in value co-creation and CE via AI.

CE has emerged as a topic of great interest for marketers in recent years. With the rapid growth of digital media and the spread of social media, firms are now embarking on new online strategies to promote CE (Javornik and Mandelli, 2012). In this review, the authors have thoroughly assessed multiple facets of prior research papers focused on the utilisation of AI in the context of CE. The existing research papers highlighted that AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants offer real-time interaction capabilities, swiftly addressing inquiries, delivering assistance and navigating customers through their experiences (Cheng and Jiang, 2022; Naqvi et al., 2023). This rapid and responsive engagement serves to enrich the customer’s overall interaction with the business. Consequently, this research can contribute to a comprehensive knowledge of how AI is assisting marketers to reach customers and create value for the firm via CE. This study also sheds light on both the attitudinal and behavioural aspects of CE on social media. While existing CE literature highlights the motivating factors driving engagement, the study underscores the significance of behavioural engagement in enhancing firm performance. It emphasises the need for researchers to understand the intricate dynamics of engagement in the context of hedonic products compared to utilitarian ones (Wongkitrungrueng and Assarut, 2020). CEs on social media assist firms in using their customers as advocates and value co-creators (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004; Sawhney et al., 2005). A few of the CE themes are conceptual in nature; hence, there is an opportunity for scholarly research in CE to examine the ways in which AI-driven platforms can effectively gather customer insights. As per the prior relationship marketing studies, it is evident that building relationships reduces customer uncertainty (Barari et al., 2020). Therefore, by using data analysis, businesses can extract valuable insights into customer preferences and behaviour, equipping them to engage with customers more effectively.

The rapid growth of social media has enabled individuals to articulate their thoughts, opinions and emotions related to a brand, which creates a large amount of data for VCC. Meanwhile, AI has emerged as a radical way of providing value content to users. It expands on a broader concept of how software and algorithms work like human beings. Data collected from customer interactions are a major prerequisite for efficiently using AI for enhancing CE. AI not only reduces error rates but, at the same time, helps human beings in decision-making during complex situations. Owing to built-in algorithms that analyse large amounts of data, companies can inspect areas that require improvement in real time. Time and resources can also be saved by automating tasks contingent on customer responses and insights. AI enables the analysis of customer data to create highly personalised experiences. It can also forecast customer behaviour and trends, helping businesses anticipate needs and preferences. This enables proactive CE strategies, such as targeted offers or timely outreach. Furthermore, AI tools can analyse customer feedback and sentiment across various channels. This feedback can be used to make necessary improvements and address concerns promptly, ultimately fostering stronger customer relationships. AI can facilitate seamless engagement across multiple digital channels, ensuring that customers can interact with a brand through their preferred means, be it social media, email, or chat. Consequently, this research proposes that practitioners and companies can use analysis performed by AI-enabled systems on CEB, which can assist companies in exploring the extent to which each product influences CE. Understanding the importance of these attributes would assist companies in developing more memorable CE features.

This study examines how prominent CE and AI are in academic research on social media by identifying research gaps and future developments. This research provides an overview of CE research and will assist academicians, regulators and policymakers in identifying the important topics that require investigation.

The current paper is part of a larger scoping review project investigating the intersection of leader(ship) identity development and meaning-making. In this review, we analyzed 100 articles to determine the current extent of literature that covers the intersection of leader(ship) identity development, meaning-making and marginalized social identities.

A review of the extant literature is included, and a conceptual model is suggested for further exploration into this critical and under-researched domain.

More research is needed at the intersection of leadership identity development, meaning-making and marginalized social identities.

As this area of study has expanded, scholars have noted an absence of research on the effect of multiple social identities, especially marginalized identities, on meaning-making and leadership identity construction.

The purpose of this study is to explore the current state of knowledge of sustainable entrepreneurship (SE) and to gain more insights from the articles originated from the emerging economies. This paper also sets an agenda for future research in this knowledge domain.

The authors perform a systematic literature review by analyzing the primary studies related to SE originating from emerging economies from Asia, Africa and the Middle East. This review scrutinizes a total number of 45 studies to explore the current state of research in this knowledge domain from such economies.

Overall, this review finds that SE research is still at the nascent stage, especially in the context of emerging economies. The authors elicit a few sub-themes, within the SE research, such as individual-level factors, organizational-level factors, institutional-level factors and cultural and social factors.

The authors present a few limitations of this study. Firstly, this study uses articles from the Scopus and Web of Science only. Secondly, this systematic review is limited to the articles originated from emerging economies of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Thirdly, this review gives overall picture of the SE research in emerging economies and the same in other economies is not in the scope of this study.

The findings of this study will be helpful to the researchers to locate avenues for future course of research in SE field. This study helps the policymakers and educational institutions of emerging economies understand and ingrain sustainability element in entrepreneurship, and thereby helps them to fulfill sustainable economy and sustainable development goals.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind in the field of SE in emerging economies. This review gives more insights on the state of SE in the emerging economies, as these economies can significantly contribute to the realization of Sustainable Development Goals.