Social entrepreneurship, as a practice and a field for scholarly investigation, provides a unique opportunity to challenge, question, and rethink concepts and assumptions from different fields of management and business research. This paper puts forward a view of social entrepreneurship as a process that catalyzes social change and/or addresses important social needs in a way that is not dominated by direct financial benefits for the entrepreneurs. Social entrepreneurship is seen as differing from other forms of entrepreneurship in the relatively higher priority given to promoting social value and development versus capturing economic value. To stimulate future research the authors introduce the concept of embeddedness as a nexus between theoretical perspectives for the study of social entrepreneurship. Different research methodologies and their implications are discussed.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID984426_code361123.pdf?abstractid=673446&mirid=1&type=2

Social Entrepreneurship Reserach: a Source of Explanation, Prediction and Delight

For the last 30 years a growing number of scholars and practitioners have been experimenting with concepts and models that facilitate our understanding of the complexities of today’s business challenges. Among these, “stakeholder theory” or “stakeholder thinking” has emerged as a new narrative to understand and remedy three interconnected business problems—the problem of understanding how value is created and traded, the problem of connecting ethics and capitalism, and the problem of helping managers think about management such that the first two problems are addressed. In this article, we review the major uses and adaptations of stakeholder theory across a broad array of disciplines such as business ethics, corporate strategy, finance, accounting, management, and marketing. We also evaluate and suggest future directions in which research on stakeholder theory can continue to provide useful insights into the practice of sustainable and ethical value creation.

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Stakeholder Theory: The State of the Art

http://www00.unibg.it/dati/corsi/910015/66577-zahra_2009.pdf

A Typology of Social Entrepreneurs: Motives, search Processes and Ethical Challenges

This article explores how hybrid organizations, which incorporate competing institutional logics, internally manage the logics that they embody. Relying on an inductive comparative case study of four work integration social enterprises embedded in competing social welfare and commercial logics, we show that, instead of adopting strategies of decoupling or compromising, as the literature typically suggests, these organizations selectively coupled intact elements prescribed by each logic. This strategy allowed them to project legitimacy to external stakeholders without having to engage in costly deceptions or negotiations. We further identify a specific hybridization pattern that we refer to as "Trojan horse," whereby organizations that entered the work integration field with low legitimacy because of their embeddedness in the commercial logic strategically incorporated elements from the social welfare logic in an attempt to gain legitimacy and acceptance. Surprisingly, they did so more than comparable organizations originating from the social welfare logic. These findings suggest that, when lacking legitimacy in a given field, hybrids may manipulate the templates provided by the multiple logics in which they are embedded in an attempt to gain acceptance. Overall, our findings contribute to a better understanding of how organizations can survive and thrive when embedded in pluralistic institutional environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inside the Hybrid Organization: Selective Coupling as a Response to Competing Institutional Logics

Executive Overview We examine the current state of the social entrepreneurship literature, asking what is unique about social entrepreneurship and what avenues create opportunities for the future of the field. After an evaluation of social entrepreneurship definitions and comparison of social entrepreneurship to other forms, we conclude that while it is not a distinct type of entrepreneurship, researchers stand to benefit most from further research on social entrepreneurship as a context in which established types of entrepreneurs operate. We demonstrate these opportunities by describing avenues for further inquiry that emerge when examining valuable assumptions and insights from existing theories inherent in conventional, cultural, and institutional entrepreneurship frameworks and integrating these insights in ways that address the unique phenomena that exist in the context of social entrepreneurship.

Social Entrepreneurship: Why We Don't Need a New Theory and How We Move Forward From Here

Entrepreneurship has been the engine propelling much of the growth of the business sector as well as a driving force behind the rapid expansion of the social sector. This article offers a comparative analysis of commercial and social entrepreneurship using a prevailing analytical model from commercial entrepreneurship. The analysis highlights key similarities and differences between these two forms of entrepreneurship and presents a framework on how to approach the social entrepreneurial process more systematically and effectively. We explore the implications of this analysis of social entrepreneurship for both practitioners and researchers.

/pdf/social-and-commercial-entrepreneurship-same-different-or-48tja4pepe.pdf

Social and Commercial Entrepreneurship: Same, Different, or Both?

/pdf/social-and-commercial-entrepreneurship-same-different-or-48kmzqadg5.pdf

Jane Wei-Skillern

Papers

Social and Commercial Entrepreneurship: Same, Different, or Both?

Social and commercial entrepreneurship: same, different, or both?