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

Work on social entrepreneurship constitutes a field of study that intersects a number of domains, including entrepreneurial studies, social innovation, and nonprofit management. Scholars are beginning to contribute to the development of this new discipline through efforts that attempt to trace the emergence of social entrepreneurship as well as by comparing it to other organizational activities such as conventional entrepreneurship. However, as a nascent field, social entrepreneurship scholars are in the midst of a number of debates involving definitional and conceptual clarity, boundaries of the field, and a struggle to arrive at a set of relevant and meaningful research questions. This paper examines the promise of social entrepreneurship as a domain of inquiry and suggests a number of research areas and research questions for future study.

Social Entrepreneurship: A Critique and Future Directions

We develop the institutional configuration perspective to understand which national contexts facilitate social entrepreneurship (SE). We confirm joint effects on SE of formal regulatory (government activism), informal cognitive (postmaterialist cultural values), and informal normative (socially supportive cultural norms, or weak-tie social capital) institutions in a multilevel study of 106,484 individuals in 26 nations. We test opposing propositions from the institutional void and institutional support perspectives. Our results underscore the importance of resource support from both formal and informal institutions, and highlight motivational supply side influences on SE. They advocate greater consideration of institutional configurations in institutional theory and comparative entrepreneurship research.

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Institutions and social entrepreneurship: The role of institutional voids, institutional support, and institutional configurations

This paper presents an exploratory analysis of the emergent reporting practices used by social entrepreneurs in terms of their institutional settings and strategic objectives. These reporting practices not only account for financial performance but also disclose more nuanced and contingent social and environmental impacts and outcomes. Furthermore, they act as symbolic objects expressing the market orientation of many socially entrepreneurial organizations in that they aim to provide more complete and transparent disclosure of a variety of performance impacts. Conceptually, this paper draws upon approaches developed within the sociology of accounting as institutional practice and uses three theoretical interpretations to conceptualize the function and effects of reporting, disclosure, and audit in social entrepreneurship: positivist; critical theorist; and interpretative. A discussion of five case studies leads to the development of a new theoretical construct - 'Blended Value Accounting' - that constitutes a spectrum of disclosure logics used by social entrepreneurs to access resources and realize organizational mission objectives with key stakeholders. Conclusions consider some further questions around socially entrepreneurial reporting practices and strategies and suggest some new lines of research going forward.

'We do good things, don't we?': 'Blended Value Accounting' in social entrepreneurship

Building on the entrepreneurial action and sustainable development literatures, we highlight how the current explanations of opportunity recognition, based on entrepreneurial knowledge and economic motivation, are insufficient for modeling the recognition of opportunities for sustainable development. Our model suggests that entrepreneurs are more likely to discover sustainable development opportunities the greater their knowledge of natural and communal environments become, the more they perceive that the natural and communal environment in which they live is threatened, and the greater their altruism toward others becomes. We propose that entrepreneurial knowledge plays a central role by moderating these effects.

Recognizing Opportunities for Sustainable Development

本文以英文文献为基础,结合美国社会相关最新动态和具体事例对"公益创业"(Social Entrepreneurship)这个崭新现象的定义和在美国诞生的背景进行了综合探讨.同时,笔者基于在美国的实践经验,对"公益创业"在美兴盛的环境进行了反思.

美国杜克大学桑福德公共政策学院

Papers

什么是"Social Entrepreneurship"(公益创业)