A conceptual overview of What We Know About Social Entrepreneurship

This contribution aims to answer the question what we know about social entrepreneurship by summarizing the current state of knowledge. It first provides a broad description of what social entrepreneurship is. Next, a conceptual overview is given of different perspectives on social entrepreneurship. More specifically, four schools of thought on social entrepreneurship are presented and a description is given of the defining characteristics that distinguish these schools from one another. Subsequently some of the main findings of empirical studies from each of the four schools are summarized and discussed. �

Social Entrepreneurship in the Modern Economy: Warm Glow, Cold Feet

This study tests and extends current knowledge on the causes of social entrepreneurship: a type of entrepreneurship that concerns the process of discovering, evaluating, and pursuing opportunities aimed at the creation of social value. In contrast to what is common in this research domain, this study applies a research design based on unique, large-scale and internationally comparable survey data. Various research themes are addressed such as the occurrence and drivers of social entrepreneurship at the macro-level, factors that influence the survival of social ventures at the firm level, and the differences and commonalities between social and commercial entrepreneurs at the individual level. At the macro-level it is concluded that social entrepreneurship clearly is a global phenomenon with a prevailing role for the level of income in a country as one of the drivers of its occurrence. At the micro-level results indicate a deviating entrepreneurial profile for social entrepreneurs that tends to be, in some respects, less favorable compared to commercial entrepreneurs in terms of effort put into the organisation, self-confidence, ambition, funding and progression to more mature stages of the entrepreneurial process. The results of this thesis are of particular interest for public policy-makers, private foundations, and support organizations who want to promote social entrepreneurship and improve the sector infrastructure. This study advocates taking account for this deviating entrepreneurial profile

What do We Know about Social Entrepreneurship: An Analysis of Empirical Research

Despite the growing attention to social entrepreneurship as a scholarly field of research, it is still in a stage of infancy. Research in the past two decades has been primarily dedicated to establishing a conceptual foundation, which has resulted in a considerable stream of conceptual papers. Empirical articles have gradually appeared since the turn of the century. Although they are still outnumbered by conceptual articles, empirical articles are of considerable significance for the evolution of social entrepreneurship as a field of scientific inquiry. The purpose of this paper is to gauge the current state of empirical research in the field by reviewing 31 empirical research studies on social entrepreneurship, classifying them along four dimensions and summarising research findings for each of these dimensions. To serve this purpose in a meaningful fashion requires discriminating between different perspectives on social entrepreneurship. Hence, four different schools of thought are presented, and the articles in our sample are classified accordingly

Social Entrepreneurship and Performance: The Role of Perceived Barriers and Risk

This study investigates if and in what way social entrepreneurs are hampered in turning their efforts into sustainable organizations. Using binary logit regressions and unique data containing approximately 26,000 individual-level data points for 36 countries, this

Sustainable Entrepreneurship: The Role of Perceived Barriers and Risk

Entrepreneurs who start a business to serve both self-interests and collective interests by addressing unmet social and environmental needs are usually referred to as sustainable entrepreneurs. Compared with regular entrepreneurs, we argue that sustainable entrepreneurs face specific challenges when establishing their businesses owing to the discrepancy between the creation and appropriation of private value and social value. We hypothesize that when starting a business, sustainable entrepreneurs (1) feel more hampered by perceived barriers, such as the institutional environment and (2) have a different risk attitude and perception than regular entrepreneurs. We use two waves of the Flash Eurobarometer survey on entrepreneurship (2009 and 2012), which contains information on start-up motivations, start-up barriers, and risk perceptions of approximately 3000 (prospective) business owners across 33 countries. We find that sustainable entrepreneurs indeed perceive more institutional barriers in terms of a lack of financial, administrative, and informational support at business start-up than regular entrepreneurs. Further, no significant differences between sustainable and regular entrepreneurs are found in terms of their risk attitudes or perceived financial risks. However, sustainable entrepreneurs are more likely to fear personal failure than regular entrepreneurs, which is explained by their varied and complex stakeholder relations. These insights may serve as an important signal for both governments and private capital providers in enhancing the institutional climate

Sustainable Entrepreneurship: The Role of Perceived Barriers and Risk

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