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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 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 purpose of this study is to measure the predictive value of future scenarios prepared using horizon scanning. The future scenarios prepared at the initiative of the Japanese Government have had low predictive value. They have frequently failed to contribute to industrial development and caused social loss. Horizon scanning, which is a key methodology applied in foresight activities, has begun to be used in countries as part of their national innovation systems in lieu of conventional forecasting methods based on the assumption of technological innovation. Research was conducted to actually measure the predictive value of future scenarios prepared using horizon scanning.

An online survey in Japan was conducted on ordinary people’s attitudes. The questionnaires presented 20 scenarios regarding future society, which were created with the conventional method or horizon scanning method.

Survey results verified that horizon scanning-based scenarios provided significantly higher predictive value than scenarios prepared using conventional methods.

Implication 1: By eliminating bias in input data and perspectives adopted when considering scenarios, it may be expected that scenarios will be derived that have even higher “predictive value.” Implication 2: By setting the layers of anticipated outputs high and the fields broad, it may be expected that scenarios will be derived that have even greater “change.”

The relatively high rate for the predictive value of the horizon scanning method, more than 40%, validated in this study was significant.

Accomplishing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is imperative for societies to meet their grand challenges. Achieving these goals by 2030 requires sustainability change agents with a can-do-attitude. This study aims to show how institutions of higher education can become partners for social marketing in bringing forward such change agents.

Taking a case study approach, this paper examines a master’s programme to identify factors relevant to educating sustainability change agents that can serve as a basis for a social marketing planning primer to foster the SDGs.

This study presents the social marketing discipline with a viable option for supporting the achievement of the SDGs through higher education. Its contributions are twofold. First, it is shown that when interdisciplinarity and a project-based approach are conceptualized and organized to create a motivating and meaningful learning environment with the SDGs as guiding principles, students, as sustainability change agents, can increase awareness and have the potential to generate impacts regarding the SDGs at the individual, organizational and institutional levels. Second, based on this, the paper provides guidance to social marketers regarding the planning of a campaign targeting higher education institutions. The authors argue that the aim of this campaign should be to promote the implementation of the SDGs as guiding principles above all, as this can facilitate the process of students becoming sustainability change agents who help achieve the goals in a timely manner.

Whilst single case studies are usually limited in drawing generalizations, the present study offers a starting point for investigating the role of universities as a target group for social marketing in fostering further sustainable development. Building on its findings, future research could test the proposed social marketing planning primer and evaluate the impact on the SDGs at a larger scale than only one university.

It is proposed to use the findings of the study to model a social marketing campaign aimed at universities to motivate them to help develop sustainability change agents in all disciplines by integrating the SDGs as guiding principles for study programmes.

Students’ impacts range from leading peers to buy sustainable products and consume less to influencing a company to adopt sustainable packaging, thereby contributing to social change.

This study is among the first to examine the possible effect of a study programme on the SDGs at different societal levels by taking the perspectives of multiple stakeholders into account and combining the theory of higher education with sustainability and social marketing.

This paper aims to address the relevance and impact of the fourth industrial revolution through a theoretical and practical perspective. The authors present both the results of a literature review, highlighting the new competences required in innovative workplaces and a pivotal case, which explores challenges and skill models diffused in industry 4.0, describing the role of proper organizational learning processes in shaping new work cultures.

The paper aims to enhance the discussion around the 4.0 industrial revolution addressing both a theoretical framework, valorizing the existing scientific contributes and the situated knowledge, embedded in a concrete organizational context in which the fourth industrial revolution is experienced and practiced.

The findings acquired through the case study endorse what the scientific literature highlights about the impact, the new competences and the organizational learning paths. The conclusions address the agile approach to work as the more suitable way to place humans at the center of technological progress.

The paper explores a specific organizational context, related to a high-tech multinational company, whose results illustrate the empirical evidence sustaining transformations in the working, professional and organizational cultures necessary to face the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution. The research was conducted with the managers of an international company and this a specific and limited target, even though relevant and interesting.

The paper connects the case with the general scenario, this study currently faces, to suggest hints and coordinates for crossing the unfolding situation and finding suitable matching between technological evolution and the development of new work and professional cultures and competences.

Due to the acceleration that the COVID-19 has impressed to the use of digital technologies and remote connexion, the paper highlights some ambivalences that the quick evolution of the new technologies entails in relation to work and social conditions.

The opportunity to match both a literature analysis and an in-depth situated case study enhances the possibility to achieve a more articulated and complex view of the viral changes generated in the current context by the digitalization process.

The purpose of this study is to investigate conceptually and empirically the direct and indirect relationships between university social responsibility (USR), university social innovation strategy (USIS) in terms of social awareness (SA), intention for social innovation (ISI), organisational structure for social innovation (SSI) and innovativeness in social value creation (ISVC) and gaining a sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) at quality-accredited faculties of an emerging market.

A conceptual model was presented and a mixed-methods approach was exploited to fill a research gap detected in strategic corporate social innovation literature. The authors formed a data collection team that contacted all the quality-accredited public and private/international faculties, of which 109 faculties in 11 Egyptian governorates responded and their quality units filled questionnaires that were analysed by structural equation modelling. For comprehensive understanding, qualitative interviews were set to gather data from managers/leaders and teaching staff working at those faculties in quality management and community engagement practices as well as students.

Results demonstrated that USR positively and significantly influenced SCA and USIS. Further, USIS (in terms of ISI, SSI and ISVC) positively and significantly influenced SCA. However, USIS (in terms of SA) had a positive yet insignificant influence on SCA. Indirectly, USIS was found to be partially mediating USR–SCA relationship.

University leaders/staff can gain insights on how to adopt differentiation strategies, which enable their institutions to shift from being just socially responsible to becoming socially innovative by presenting solutions to social, economic, cultural, environmental and health-care problems/challenges within their communities in general and during pandemics. This can be sustained through developing innovative quality-based processes/programmes/services related to education, research and community outreach that better serve social needs to be quality-accredited and unique over their rivals.

Satisfying social needs through promoting innovative processes/services can reinforce a favourable social change.

From a cross-disciplinary perspective, the authors interwove conceptually sparse literature of strategic, operations, knowledge capacity and innovation management that studied university social innovation research area. Also, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research that examined empirically USR–USIS–SCA relationships of quality-accredited faculties in an emerging economy during Covid-19 pandemic.

The purpose of this paper is to identify what attention science pays to CSR communication for the process of career orientation and employer decision-making by the critical sought after top talent.

The review is structured as a systematic literature review of the CSR–HRM intersection. In 11 EBSCO online databases one of several “CSR-terms” was combined with one of several “HRM-terms”.

Although CSR has long been recognized as a relevant factor for organizational attractiveness (Greening and Turban, 2000) and talent attraction and its importance is reflected in the ongoing “war for talent” (Chambers et al., 1998) in which (prospective) leaders are considered a critical human resource for corporate success (Ansoff, 1965), few contributions are focusing on successfully recruited future leaders/high potentials.

There is a knowledge gap about the importance of CSR in high potential recruiting, which influences both resource-strong decisions on the company side and the communication behavior of applicants. Companies only know about a general CSR relevance for employees and applicants. Accordingly, no attention-optimized CSR communication can take place. In the highly competitive battle for the attention of high potentials, this leads to undifferentiated communication formats. At the same time, high potentials may not receive the CSR information of interest to them from an employer at the relevant time and therefore cannot present an optimal fit in the cover letters and thus cannot prove themselves as ideal candidates.

CSR is not only an obligatory field of communication for companies, but also a special opportunity in recruiting the young value-oriented generations Y and Z. The research on CSR communication in the course of their career decision has not been covered in a review so far, the research situation is thus explicitly addressed for the first time and practical implications for the post COVID-19 employer brand and recruiting communication are addressed.

The purpose of this article is to address research gaps relating to agency and institutionalism in new institutional theory (NIT) and institutional work (IW) and use the critical sensemaking (CSM) approach to bridge the debates around agency, especially on issues of language and discourse, actor network theory (ANT) and history.

A conceptual analysis of the literature is performed to discuss issues of agency in IW and CSM in organizations, and examples of empirical studies are used to illustrate connectivity, contrast and fusion.

The analysis illustrates points of distance (rather than disconnect), but most importantly, connectivity and the potential for further developments between the literature on IW and CSM.

Discussion around new possibilities to focus on agency has the potential to contribute to humanist thinking about the (agentic) character of organizations and the potential for social change.

The article contributes to the discussion of agency in the organization through a starting point (i.e. CSM) outside of NIT.

This article focuses on the leadership development of young adults. The topic is of significant importance as leadership identity tends to form early in life, and its long-term implications contribute to leadership formation. The objective of this study was to gain insights into how leadership is constructed in young adults and how it is manifested in their preferred leadership identity.

This research was approached from a constructivist perspective, utilizing discourse analysis. The authors conducted a study involving 24 written essays by young individuals with a business background, in which they shared their early leadership experiences. Drawing upon a modified life story interview structure, the authors meticulously analyzed the content.

The authors identified eight discourses clustered into two groups according to the types of leadership orientation: toward oneself and toward others. The discourses in the toward oneself group consist of leadership as taking responsibility, leadership as courage, manifesting personal strengths and as a role/status. The toward others group includes discourses approaching leadership as balancing directivity, coordinating and organizing work, personalized approach and as performance management.

The major methodological limitations stem from the qualitative design per se. The findings based on qualitative data have limits in generalizing.

The authors' findings have practical implications for educators. The authors propose the utilization of critical self-reflection on early leadership experiences and self-narration as effective tools in nurturing and developing young leaders.

This paper underscores the importance of educating young leaders, as they can create a positive impact on their subordinates and society as a whole. By providing them with leadership skills, the authors initiate a chain reaction of influence that extends through different levels of leadership, leading to significant social change.

The authors' originality and contribution to the literature on leadership development lies in showcasing the diversity of perspectives on leadership among participants sharing a similar background and developmental stage. This holds valuable implications for educators working with this cohort.

While it is argued that entrepreneurship provides considerable freedom, it is also underlined that it might have the potential for exclusion and oppression. The study contributes to this debate and aims to investigate how entrepreneurs with disabilities (EWD) ascribe meaning to freedom in a contested terrain informed by entrepreneurial autonomy as well as constraints due to impairments and an ableist social environment.

The study uses a qualitative approach and builds upon the critical concepts of negative, positive and social freedom as a theoretical lens for the in-depth analysis of the twenty-nine semi-structured interviews with EWD in Hungary.

Findings indicate that EWD experiences freedom in ambivalent ways. Engaging in the discourse of entrepreneurship offers a subversive discursive toolkit to debunk the constraints established by ableism, enabling both negative and positive freedom. However, individualism being at the heart of entrepreneurship results in othering and undermines social freedom. Thus, while entrepreneurship offers greater individual freedom in both a negative and a positive sense for people with disabilities (PWD), it nevertheless fails to promote collective social change.

Contributing to the critical disability literature, findings contrast the view that having an impairment only reduces a person's abilities and highlight that it also affects the very nature of liberty. Contributing to critical studies on entrepreneurship, the case of EWD provides empirical evidence for understanding the simultaneous emancipatory and oppressive character of entrepreneurship through the interplay of the subjective experience of freedom related to disability and entrepreneurship.