Abstract
Aiming to complement and ground the theory of social entrepreneurship opportunity identification, we draw from a database of 2,872 entrepreneurs’ life stories with two main objectives. The first is to provide a comprehensive list and categorization of antecedents of opportunity identification in the context of social entrepreneurship. The second is to demonstrate the systemic interconnections between those and build a model of social entrepreneurship opportunity identification. We review the literature and establish a framework of five high-order key antecedents’ areas (context, background, social networks and interactions, affect, and cognitive process). We then proceed to a five-step empirical triangulation methodology mixing computerized and manual content analysis. We thereby identify 42 antecedents nested into 17 first-level items grouped into the five high-order key antecedents’ areas. Our detailed results shed light on a wide array of previously ignored antecedents and provide more precisions about those that had already been documented elsewhere. Finally, we highlight and explain the relationships between the antecedents, show that they constitute an “opportunity growing ground,” and present a full model of social entrepreneurship opportunity identification based on their interconnections. The context of the social entrepreneur combines stable features regarding access to various resources, a strong geographical identity and history, the encounter of several worlds, all condition or are conditioned by his/her social networks and background. This context is also subject to diverse constraints and institutional barriers that can shape the entrepreneur’s background, her/his experiences, as well as his/her affect specificities. This stable context is at some point hit by elements of change that disrupt this stability, triggering chains of reactions between the various antecedents of opportunity identification.
Highlights
Our analysis suggests three levels of antecedents.Our first-level results match the broad categories, which have previously been categorized in the mainstream entrepreneurship literature
These antecedents fall into the HOKAAs from the mainstream entrepreneurship literature and cover some of the specific ones identified in the Social Entrepreneurship Opportunity Identification (SEOI) literature
The rapidly developing literature on SE presents the phenomenon as being an integral part of and sharing numerous characteristics with mainstream entrepreneurship
Summary
“In a society that has chronically higher levels of violence and suicide rates than any other OECD countries, [social entrepreneur] Hye-Shin Chung, is enabling ordinary citizens to help themselves and people around them overcome their emotional and psychological trauma.” Over the past 60 years, a series of collective trauma deeply marked the Korean historical and socio-economic. Through a cognitive process that is weaved into her social entrepreneur story (identifying a gap between a need for specific mental healthcare and existing solutions), Hye-Shin identifies social opportunities that are clearly shaped by her country historical socioeconomic context (collective traumas, institutional failure, and lack of resources), her background (education and professional experience in psychiatry), her affect (personal childhood trauma, observer and victim of South Korean collective traumas), and her social networks (institutions, professional national and international networks, former and current patients) These antecedents fall into the HOKAAs from the mainstream entrepreneurship literature and cover some of the specific ones identified in the SEOI literature (access to resources, activism, experience corridors, childhood trauma, empathy, openness, perseverance, institutional and professional network, imprinting, and reflexivity). Computerized content analysis of stories (within and across stories analysis using Tropes software)
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