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The purpose of this paper is to inform scholars and practitioners about the current body of knowledge on the role of social capital in scaling social impact since these concepts are still poorly understood and literature is fragmented despite their importance.

A systematic literature review of 27 highly relevant studies in leading journals is conducted, and the results are synthesized into an integrative theoretical framework.

The framework identifies possible dependent, independent, mediating and moderating variables which conceptualize the role of social capital in scaling social impact.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to systematically map social capital’s role in scaling social impact literature with the help of an integrative theoretical framework. For researchers, this framework would help by providing a shared frame of reference to conceptualize the role of social capital in scaling social impact and identify future research directions. Practitioners can use the findings of this review as a guide while designing and implementing scaling social impact programs.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the factors that influence social entrepreneurial ventures’ (SEVs) pursuit of a blended value approach. This paper predicts and examines that the mindset of SEV senior decision-makers leads them to perceive organisational goals differently.

This paper tests the hypotheses on an original data set of 171 SEVs by means of discriminant analysis.

The results suggest that social entrepreneurs who display an agency-oriented mindset tend to perceive organisational goals as being single: either social or financial. Conversely, social entrepreneurs who have a stewardship-oriented mindset tend to perceive organisational goals as blending both. The findings also underline that senior decision-makers’ mindsets in terms of governance are far from being uniform in SEVs.

The findings empirically contribute to the argument that agency principles do apply to broader contexts than profit-oriented organisations (Wiseman et al., 2012) and frame SEVs as a promising context that redefines principal-agent relationships. It follows that the expected association between non-economic goals and stewardship put forward in the literature needs to be nuanced: only a blended value approach of social and financial objectives is associated with stewardship, whereas single social goals are best perceived by agency-oriented senior decision-makers. The results are limited to a single survey, using cross-sectional data.

The findings have a bearing on goal setting in social entrepreneurship. The results suggest that practitioners who display a stewardship mindset are more likely to perceive a double bottom line than those displaying an agency mindset.

A novel feature of the model is the incorporation of senior decision-makers’ heterogeneous “governance mindsets” (agency and stewardship) and one of the first empirical tests of blended value in social entrepreneurship.

This paper aims to make sense of the social enterprise in a frame of social procurement and conceptualise it as a provider of public welfare based on bibliometric material. Comprehensively, it contributes to developments in social procurement, which has received limited attention.

Scoping literature from Web of Science and using bibliometric methods, the paper identifies and qualitatively explores the literary intersections between social enterprise and social procurement.

Of the 183 articles, four literary clusters are revealed illustrating scholarly intersections and a detailed exploration of social enterprise as a public provider. The alignment and themes of the clusters further indicate the application of, and role played by, social enterprise in social procurement. Collectively, they reveal the dominance of social enterprise in this dyadic relationship and a minor undertaking of research in social procurement.

This “sense-making” groundwork forms a foundational step in developing our understanding of procurements through social enterprises. Furthermore, a positioning and conceptualisation of social enterprise accredits their utility and applicability in delivering public benefits. In this way, the paper informs and supports scholarly and practice-based interest into social enterprises for the delivery of public services.

The paper presents the first bibliometric conceptualisation of social enterprise in relation to social procurement and offers detailed insights through the bibliometric clusters. Furthermore, the paper contributes to the underdeveloped social dimension of procurement and bridges the gap between two distinct fields of scholarship: public management and administration and social entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how extending social innovation and impact learning to the field was accomplished.

The paper discusses how experiential learning can be adapted to social entrepreneurship education and how to structure the course and deliverables. It highlights the importance of students' selection and preparation.

The paper shares some students' reflections on their fieldwork and how they dealt with new ideas. It also provides three central lessons – “go real”, “go deep”, “get feedback” – that were learned through the experience.

Since information from only one course offering has been reported, a simple generalization should be made cautiously. For this reason, the transferability of this experiential learning course to other regions of the world is discussed and recommendations are offered for educators who want to engage in a successful “boundary‐less classroom.”

Initial evidence is provided that the success of experiential learning in social innovation and impact can be guaranteed by a number of elements, including students' preparation to assist them as they confront challenges found in the field experience. Experiential learning would not be transferable without deep intercultural understanding and a well‐chosen selection of social enterprises and social entrepreneurs with whom to collaborate.

This paper aims to provide a deeper understanding on social entrepreneurial behavior (SEB). Previous researchers mostly focused on social entrepreneurial intention leaving a gap between intention and behavior. The present study, however, tries to explore the issues related to actual SEB by taking data from those who are actively involved in social entrepreneurial activities.

For testing the hypothesized model of this study, a survey was conducted taking samples from 320 respondents who are actively involved in social entrepreneurial activities. The collected data were analyzed by SmartPLS version 2.0.M3 for validating the results.

The findings generated from the empirical data reveal that self-efficacy was found to be the most significant followed by moral obligation, innovativeness, social support and empathy (EM) in influencing SEB. In addition to that, perceived desirability partially mediated the relationship between EM, social support, innovativeness and SEB.

This study establishes the importance of some distinctive factors influencing SEB. It is believed that the present study has important implications for society as a whole for solving societal problems and it enriches existing body of knowledge as well.

Context matters in social entrepreneurship, and it matters a lot. Social entrepreneurs are deeply entrenched in the context where they operate: they respond to its challenges, are shaped by it, and attempt to shape it in turn. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how social entrepreneurship in Africa is still understood within the scope of Western theories, without much consideration for local variations of the commonly shared archetype of social entrepreneurship or for how African norms, values and beliefs may shape our common understanding of this phenomenon.

The authors survey the often-neglected literature on social entrepreneurship in Africa and bring it together in this paper to discuss – also from the vantage point of their own experience and research in diverse African countries – how important assumptions in the social entrepreneurship literature are confirmed, enriched or challenged by key dimensions of African contexts.

Four important themes in the literature on social entrepreneurship in Africa emerged – institutions, embedding values, entrepreneurial behaviour and bricolage and scaling impact – each with its own considerations of how African contexts may challenge predominant assumptions in the extant social entrepreneurship literature, as well as implications for future research.

The authors uncover ways in which the peculiarities of the African context may challenge the underlying – and mostly implicit – assumptions that have shaped the definition and analysis of social entrepreneurship. They end by offering their understanding of social entrepreneurship and its concomitant dimensions in Africa as a stepping stone for advancing the field in the continent and beyond.

This paper aims to identify the values antecedents of women’s social entrepreneurship. It explores where and how these values emerge and how they underpin the perceived desirability and feasibility of social venture creation.

Values development across the life-course is interrogated through retrospective sense-making by thirty UK-based women social entrepreneurs.

The findings express values related to empathy, social justice and action-taking, developed, consolidated and challenged in a variety of experiential domains over time. The cumulative effects of these processes result in the perceived desirability and feasibility of social entrepreneurial venture creation as a means of effecting social change and achieving coherence between personal values and paid work, prompting social entrepreneurial action-taking.

This paper offers novel, contextualised insights into the role that personal values play as antecedents to social entrepreneurship. It contributes to the sparse literature focussed on both women’s experiences of social entrepreneurship generally, and on their personal values specifically.