Being the boss, being bossed: Social entrepreneurs' experience of flexibility in prosocial work

Academy of Management ReviewVol. 38, No. 3 DialogueStudying the Origins of Social Entrepreneurship: Compassion and the Role of Embedded AgencyMatthew G. Grimes, Jeffery S. McMullen, Timothy J. Vogus and Toyah L. MillerMatthew G. GrimesUniversity of Alberta, Jeffery S. McMullenIndiana University, Timothy J. VogusVanderbilt University and Toyah L. MillerIndiana UniversityPublished Online:6 Mar 2013https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2012.0429AboutSectionsView articleView Full TextPDF/EPUB ToolsDownload CitationsAdd to favoritesTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail View articleREFERENCESArend R. J. 2013. A heart-mind-opportunity nexus: Distinguishing social entrepreneurship for entrepreneurs. Academy of Management Review, 38: 313–315.Link , Google ScholarBattilana J. 2006. Agency and institutions: The enabling role of individuals' social position. Organization, 13: 653–676. Google ScholarDacin M. T., Dacin P. A., Tracey P. 2011. 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Social entrepreneurship: Theoretical antecedents and empirical analysis of entrepreneurial processes and outcomes. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 14: 418–434. Google ScholarFiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited ByEntrepreneurship for the Public Good: A Review, Critique, and Path Forward for Social and Environmental Entrepreneurship ResearchSiddharth Vedula, Claudia Doblinger, Desirée Pacheco, Jeffrey G. York, Sophie Bacq, Michael V. Russo and Thomas J. Dean26 January 2022 | Academy of Management Annals, Vol. 16, No. 1Energizing through Visuals: How Social Entrepreneurs Use Emotion-Symbolic Work for Social ChangeDavid Barberá-Tomás, Itziar Castelló, Frank G. A. de Bakker and Charlene Zietsma19 December 2019 | Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 62, No. 6Why We Care about Certified B Corporations: From Valuing Growth to Certifying Values PracticesJoel Gehman, Matthew G. Grimes and Ke Cao26 March 2019 | Academy of Management Discoveries, Vol. 5, No. 1Hidden Badge of Honor: How Contextual Distinctiveness Affects Category Promotion among Certified B CorporationsJoel Gehman and Matthew Grimes23 February 2018 | Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 60, No. 6An Identity-Based Approach to Social EnterpriseTyler Wry and Jeffrey G. York8 September 2015 | Academy of Management Review, Vol. 42, No. 3An Embedded Agency Approach to Entrepreneurship Public Policy: Managerial Position and Politics in New Venture Location DecisionsJeffery S. McMullen, Matthew S. Wood and Alexander S. Kier27 July 2016 | Academy of Management Perspectives, Vol. 30, No. 3Converging Winds: Logic Hybridization in the Colorado Wind Energy FieldJeffrey G. York, Timothy J. Hargrave and Desirée F. Pacheco8 June 2015 | Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 59, No. 2 Vol. 38, No. 3 Permissions Metrics Downloaded 75 times in the past 12 months History Published online 6 March 2013 Published in print 1 July 2013 Information© Academy of Management ReviewWe thank Roy Suddaby for his editorial feedback.PDF download

Social Entrepreneurship and COVID‐19

Over the past years, institutional theory has become an increasingly utilized theoretical lens for social entrepreneurship (SE) research. However, while there is a rapid growth of SE research that employs an institutional perspective, researchers have yet to systematically understand the wide-ranging application of institutional theory to SE study. Thus, a review of existing SE literature that employs institutional theory seems warranted and timely. Accordingly, we initially review the current use of institutional theory in SE research based on 101 peer-reviewed articles published between 2008 and 2020. More specifically, drawing on four critical institutional perspectives that have long been used in entrepreneurship research (including institutional context, legitimacy, institutional logic, and institutional entrepreneurship), we provide the first comprehensive analysis of the uses of institutional theory in SE literature. We then offer a comparative analysis of the application of institutional theory to SE and commercial entrepreneurship based on these four institutional perspectives, especially considering the similarities and differences between social and commercial entrepreneurship. Based on our review, we finally identify gaps in the existing SE study and provide several promising avenues for future SE study, as well as contribute to advancing institutional theory development.

Purpose The authors bring diverse feminist perspectives to bear on social entrepreneurship research and practice to challenge existing assumptions and approaches while providing new directions for research at the intersections of gender, social and commercial entrepreneurship. Design/methodology/approach The authors apply liberal feminist, socialist feminist and transnational/post-colonial feminist perspectives to critically examine issues of gender in the field of social entrepreneurship. Findings By way of three distinct feminist lenses, the analyses suggest that the social entrepreneurship field does not recognize gender as an organizing principle in society. Further to this, a focus on women within this field replicates problematic gendered assumptions underlying the field of women’s entrepreneurship research. Practical implications The arguments and suggestions provide a critical gender perspective to inform the strategies and programmes adopted by practitioners and the types of research questions entrepreneurship scholars ask. Social implications The authors redirect the conversation away from limited status quo approaches towards the explicit and implicit aim of social entrepreneurship and women’s entrepreneurship: that is, economic and social equality for women across the globe. Originality/value The authors explicitly adopt a cultural, institutional and transnational analysis to interrogate the intersection of gender and social entrepreneurship.

Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2015 to 2016: Special Topic Report on Social Entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurship has captured the increasing interest and imagination of scholars, practitioners, governments, and the general public since the early 1990s. It has extended the concept of entrepreneurship by including (and in some cases, emphasizing) the ‘social dimension’ of entrepreneurial ventures. This book defines social entrepreneurship as an entrepreneurial process initiated by social entrepreneurs with social goals/missions in pursuit of social value creation; social entrepreneurship outcomes are social enterprises, including social businesses using commercial means and non-profit organizations. This volume is truly international, with contributions from nine different countries by twenty-two different researchers. One aim has been to present papers from different contexts on the economy, politics, and cultural issues, and in national and regional contexts, combining the needs of commercial, social, and human development. For social entrepreneurship, such contexts might comprise sparsely populated areas or urban areas, social entrepreneurship education, social entrepreneurship for healthcare, social entrepreneurship finance, and so on. In all this, we seek to conceptualize the notion of social entrepreneurship, both social and societal. Therefore, this volume develops social entrepreneurship research and takes it in practical directions, synthesizing the numerous streams of social entrepreneurship research and theory for the benefit of educators, libraries, scholars, non-profit researchers, public policymakers, practitioners, students, and any organization or individual interested in staying abreast of advances in this area. It is also an important reference book for faculty and students interested in conducting research or teaching social entrepreneurship. KeywordsCorporate Social ResponsibilitySocial EnterpriseSocial EntrepreneurshipSocial EntrepreneurSocial InnovationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Social entrepreneurship is multi-disciplinary area of scholarly enquiry. Being a new area of research, this is yet to emerge fully. Scholars have been studying cases in search of concepts to explain social entrepreneurship. Attempts have also been made to theorise the phenomenon and to develop theories thereof. Hence, it is obvious that research on social entrepreneurship in the last decades has been mostly qualitative and case study based and the scholars have been mostly focusing on developing concepts to explain functions and processes while reporting the impact. Case studies have also been used to explain similarities and differences between social and commercial entrepreneurship. Qualitative research provides strength to unfold the concepts and allows enormous possibilities to open up new dimensions. In this chapter, critique on case study method of qualitative research provided us the way to present different phenomenon to theorise which eventually would provide sound basis to construct theory on social entrepreneurship.

Social entrepreneurship (SE) involves identifying and exploiting opportunities to create social value through commercial and market-based activities. It is increasingly recognized as an important approach to addressing societal challenges that are not yet adequately tackled by existing governments, nonprofit organizations, or companies. While SE is recognized as a multilevel phenomenon involving diverse actors and processes across various levels of analysis, its explanation and effects remain only partially understood. To achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the multilevel nature of SE, I adopted a multilevel framework in this thesis to explore the various cross-level effects between macro- and microlevels on SE and its social impact. Therefore, the main research question in this PhD thesis is: How do macrolevel conditions relate to microlevel antecedents in affecting SE and its outcomes? I primarily leveraged institutional theory as the theoretical foundation to answer this research question. Overall, in this dissertation, which includes four studies reported in Chapters 2-5, I examined how institutional theory is applied in the SE domain, how macro- and microlevel antecedents jointly influence SE, and how social enterprises work with local communities to create social impact. Specifically, Chapter 2 contributes to both SE and institutional theory literature by providing an up-to-date overview of institutional theory-based SE research and discussing the ethics of SE within this research topic. It reveals three unique conversations between SE and institutions: institutional and societal change, institutional complexity and hybrid organizations, and the institutional context of SE. We further delved into each conversation, identifying new avenues for future research. We also encouraged scholars to critically examine ethics in institutional SE research and proposed several opportunities for incorporating ethics in future studies. In chapters 3 and 4, we focused on the macro-to-micro situational mechanisms in the context of SE, seeking to understand how national conditions and individual-level factors both independently and jointly predict individuals’ SE activity. Chapter 3 adopts the view of institutions as constraints and employs discovery theory of opportunities to comprehend individuals’ engagement in SE. Moving on to Chapter 4, we used the legitimacy and organizational ecology perspectives to investigate individuals’ SE behavior. These two chapters advance knowledge of SE phenomena in an explicit multilevel setting. Chapter 5 addresses recent calls for more attention to the societal impact created by SEs through the involvement of local communities. We explored what specific dynamic capabilities are needed for social enterprises to involve local communities in creating societal impact within the Chinese context. This chapter enriches our understanding of how SE fosters societal impact through community involvement, particularly in the context of China. Overall, with the above research into SE and its effects, I hope to contribute to a society where SE plays a more significant role in generating lasting change in social, cultural, and environmental issues. By gaining a deeper understanding of the multilevel nature of SE, we can craft effective policies to support the development of SE, such as encouraging the legal registration of social enterprises in different countries.

Social entrepreneurship (SE), as a field of practice that is widely endorsed and supported by political institutions, has come a long way in ‘mainstreaming from the margins’ in recent decades. Yet SE exists in a state of highly contested discourse, i.e. capable of forging social cohesion as well as shattering existing boundaries between state and society. Difficult and ambiguous to agreeably define, the optimistic rush to (re)invent and promote SE has faded somewhat as politicians, citizens and social entrepreneurs try to suitably reframe SE in a post-Global Financial Crisis (GFC) environment. In the United Kingdom, political support has been maintained because SE offers a way to engage so-called 'third sector' organisations more efficiently with state processes and requirements (Office of the Third Sector, 2009, Aiken and Bode, 2009, Kelly, 2007, Haugh and Kitson, 2007). General publics have been both interested but also sceptical about SE - how is it different to the work done by voluntary and community organizations? What does one 'look' like and what are the benefits at local levels of social action? While we might expect that these questions have been already suitably answered, recent research shows that they have not (Steyaert and Dey, 2010, Curtis, 2008, Haugh, 2012). Instead of theorizing SE as a conceptual whole, I adopt a critical view which tolerates both the contradictory multiplicities in SE identities, and the centrality of fractured power relations in the SE construct and its discourses (Tomlinson and Schwabenland, 2010, Sharp and Richardson, 2001). In doing so, I draw from some key research dealing with SE identity, especially that which centres on articulation of the self and the suppressed-self (Jones et al., 2008, Parkinson and Howorth, 2008). Following this, I develop an account of the contemporary importance of conceptual 'fault-lines' in SE discourse, which bears testament to the diverse histories and cultural legacies that have produced socially enterprising organizations. Building on this, I seek to further problematize SE discourse with reference to the current critical turn in SE research, especially in terms of the type of power relations in discourse. This assists current knowledge by acknowledging the necessary incompleteness of the SE idea and identities, and shows that political discourse overlooks this reality, creating a false consensus that SE offers a 'whole' solution. Indeed, I argue that it is perhaps less than necessary for a full ‘mainstreaming’ of SE when there seems to still be a great deal of value inhabiting the margins where corporations and the state cannot make sustainable impact.

Purpose The purpose is to assess current construct measurement in social entrepreneurship and provide recommendations for future construct measurement on the topic. Methodology/design We use content analysis to assess the construct measurement practices in social entrepreneurship research. Prior studies were coded and analyzed to assess the way social entrepreneurship researchers have developed measures for key constructs in the social entrepreneurship literature. The content analysis allows for the examination of the number, type, and measures associated with social entrepreneurship research and for the comparison with the construct measurement practices in entrepreneurship research, in general. Findings We suggest that, while initial quantitative research has provided a useful start for empirical analysis of social entrepreneurship, future research can be improved by developing and applying stronger measures of key constructs, such as social value, mission consistency, and performance of social enterprises. Originality/value This chapter takes a content analytic approach to provide evidence regarding how a foundational element such as construct measurement has developed within social entrepreneurship research. We also propose directions for improving future research by validating and strengthening measurements of core constructs in social entrepreneurship.

It’s Not You: It’s Me! Breaking up Social Entrepreneurship Identity

Entrepreneurial ventures that explicitly address social and environmental issues have proliferated, together with diverse but strictly connected research streams and academic discussions around the phenomena of social entrepreneurship and sustainable entrepreneurship. However, while existing literature reviews address either social or sustainable entrepreneurship, studies systematizing the convergences and divergences of both sustainable and social entrepreneurship simultaneously in the academic literature are lacking. To fill this gap, the authors performed a systematic literature review covering the Scopus and Web of Science databases from 2001 to 2022. A total of 209 articles were reviewed, and thematic and lexical data analyses were conducted. As a result, convergences and divergences related to enablers, impact, business models, financial constraints, and fundraising instruments were identified. This article concludes by providing insights about knowledge gaps associated with the role of entrepreneurs, networks, impact measurement, business model innovation, and the capital structure of social and sustainable ventures.

The world is marked by persistent and recurring socio-economic and environmental changes. The domains of social innovation and social entrepreneurship have gained prominence as catalysts for positive change and societal resilience. Despite the substantial body of literature assessing social innovation and social entrepreneurship, most studies address these topics through analyses of scientific production output or through systematic literature reviews. Conversely, the main objective of this paper is to conduct a thematic analysis of the existing scientific literature on social innovation and social entrepreneurship, published across various geographical contexts, to assess themes, trends, and discourse within these fields worldwide. Therefore, it synthesizes, analyzes, and evaluates the evolving landscape of social innovation and social entrepreneurship research over time, employing a sliding windows methodology. This approach divides the analyzed period into distinct times to meticulously track changes in themes and discourse over time. To accomplish this objective, this paper examines the evolving thematic dynamics of social innovation and social entrepreneurship within the scientific literature, serving as a driver and compelling researchers and practitioners to explore new dimensions in social innovation and social entrepreneurship. Evidence from the analysis is discussed, including the main theoretical and practical implications and proposals for future research. This paper emphasizes the importance of adaptive and resilient approaches within the domains of social innovation and social entrepreneurship and contributes to a deeper understanding of how social innovation and social entrepreneurship evolve and adapt over time, shedding light on the transformative potential of social innovation and social entrepreneurship.

Why do social entrepreneurs retain their faith in social entrepreneurship despite the organizational tensions and anxieties inherent to this field of practice? In this article, we employ the psychoanalytic concept of fantasy to advance knowledge on social enterprise creation. The research analyses qualitative data relating to the adoption of the Community Interest Company, a bespoke organizational form for social enterprise. We argue that social entrepreneurs adopt a specific organizational form because it represents a fantasmatic object that supports their desire for pro-social work. This fantasmatic form appears to temporarily neutralize tensions and anxieties while preserving attachments to pro-social ideals. Our first contribution is to extant research on the role of fantasy in social enterprise. Specifically, we elucidate how social enterprise creation is riven with fantasy-laden attachments to ideals of pro-social work that promise to counteract concerns about future viability as well as competing social and for-profit missions. Our second contribution is to highlight the role that organizational form choice plays in effectively managing such tensions and anxieties as it provides a robust anchor for pro-social desires. Fantasmatic attachments to pro-social work and organizational form thus emerge as integral to social enterprise creation.

PurposeThis paper aims to facilitate researchers, academicians and entrepreneurs gain insights on the social entrepreneurship concept and future research opportunities in the context of the Asia-Pacific countries (APAC).Design/methodology/approachThe diversity of social entrepreneurship phenomenon visible in 101 journal publications was reviewed and analyzed to identify research perspectives and opportunities, with special focus on papers published on the APAC context between 1998 and 2015. The keywords for search were “social entrepreneurship”, “social enterprises”, “social entrepreneur” and the names of all countries in APAC.FindingsThe study identifies three prominent themes in need of more research in the APAC countries: contextual, institutional and personal factors surrounding social entrepreneurship; usage of market orientation by social enterprises to generate economic and social value; and impact of social entrepreneurship education on generating talent pool for social enterprises.Originality/valueDuring the review on the social entrepreneurship concept, it was felt that most research originated from both sides of the Atlantic rather than the APAC. Interestingly, no review was found on research published on social entrepreneurship as perceived and practiced in APAC. Therefore, this paper would be of particular value to any researcher who would conduct social entrepreneurship research in the Asia-Pacific context. Asia-Pacific offers immense scope for empirical research for theory generation and theory testing in different contexts.