A Review of Social Entrepreneurship Research
To enhance the understanding of social entrepreneurship, researchers have to reach a consensus on the construct of definitions and, in doing so, acknowledge the diversity of research interests involved in the study of social entrepreneurship. The purpose
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A Review of Social Entrepreneurship Research Anne Pierre, Yvonne von Friedrichs and Joakim Wincent
Abstract
To enhance the understanding of social entrepreneurship, researchers have to reach a consensus on the construct of definitions and, in doing so, acknowledge the diversity of research interests involved in the study of social entrepreneurship. The purpose of the chapter is to present a state-of-the-art review and a bibliographical analysis of the field of social entrepreneurship. We highlight and analyse the extent to which research has devoted significant attention to social entrepreneurship, what individual researchers have published about social entrepreneurship topics, and how they have engaged in areas of discussion and made contributions. In a response to the lack of published research and incremental knowledge-building, the chapter further maps the prominent issues discussed in the social entrepreneurship literature and outlines some possible emergent research dialogues. One presumption in our study is that the discussions in the most cited articles have had a major impact on the direction of the contemporary social entrepreneurship discourse. In this vein, the study highlights key contributors and contributions to the multidisciplinary
A. Pierre Y. von Friedrichs (&) Mid University, Östersund, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] A. Pierre e-mail: [email protected] J. Wincent University of Vaasa, Vaasa, Finland e-mail: [email protected] J. Wincent Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden
A. Lundström et al. (eds.), Social Entrepreneurship, International Studies in Entrepreneurship, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-01396-1_3, Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
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field of social entrepreneurship, and the relationships between individual contributions and the broader discussion in the literature.
3.1
Introduction
Social entrepreneurship can broadly be viewed as a process of creating value by combining resources in new ways that are intended primarily to explore and exploit opportunities for creating social value by stimulating social change or meeting social needs (Mair and Martí 2006). The use of entrepreneurship for social purposes rather than for profit, or how entrepreneurial profits can be used for social purposes, has been of great interest for practice and policy for quite some time (Fowler 2000; Harding 2004). The new global scenario, where marketization has gained power, has challenged the way common social functions are organized and financed. All over the world, researchers now report that innovative individuals are solving social needs that are unaddressed by private business, government, and other institutions. Practice reveals that these entrepreneurs have been able to fight social problems such as inequality and poverty using solutions that traditional entrepreneurship has failed to address. Inspired by the fact that social entrepreneurs can be highly potent social transformers by dint of adopting a mission to create and sustain s
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