Abstract
This study explores the emergence of a new entrepreneurship phenomenon (digital social entrepreneurship) as a result of the collaboration among many agents (N-Helix), given the government’s limited capacity to respond to the stakeholders’ needs satisfaction related to an exogenous event (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic). Our theory development is based on three ongoing academic debates related to (a) the unrepresentativeness of the stakeholder theory in entrepreneurship research; (b) the emergence of digital social entrepreneurship (DSE) as a bridge between stakeholders’ needs, socio-economic actors, and digital-social initiatives; and (c) the role of N-Helix collaborations to facilitate the emergence of global knowledge-intensive initiatives and the rapid adoptions of open innovations. Our results support our assumptions about the positive mediation effect of DSE in the relationship between N-Helix collaborations and stakeholders’ satisfaction. Notably, results show how pandemic has intensified these relationships and how DSE in N-Helix collaborations can generate social impacts globally. Some implications for policy-makers have emerged from our results that should be considered during/post-COVID-19 pandemic.
Highlights
On January 1st, 2020, the Word Health Organization (WHO) announced a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which causes a new disease called coronavirus
This study examines the relationship between N-Helix collaboration and digital social entrepreneurship (DSE) due to the government’s limited capacity to respond to the stakeholders’ needs satisfaction related to exogenous events
Following Battisti’s (2019) reasoning, we argue that the COVID-19 pandemic has raised important questions that should be answered at the intersection of digital technologies, societal needs, and entrepreneurial behaviors emerging a new phenomenon: digital social entrepreneurship (DSE)
Summary
On January 1st, 2020, the Word Health Organization (WHO) announced a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which causes a new disease called coronavirus. The WHO recognized coronavirus as a pandemic (the COVID-19) on March 11th, 2020. At this moment, we started to observe worldwide curfews, quarantines, and similar restrictions (i.e., stay-at-home orders, shelter-in-place orders, shutdowns, or lockdowns) related to the COVID-19 pandemic; from January 1st to July 31st, WHO has confirmed 17.064.064 cases of COVID-19 across 216 countries around the world, including 668.073 deaths (WHO, 2020b). Despite governments’ efforts to counter the downturn with fiscal and monetary policy support (Frydman & Phelps, 2020), a deep recession triggered by the pandemic is expected to leave lasting scars through lower investment, an erosion of human capital through lost work and schooling, and fragmentation of global trade and supply linkages (World Bank, 2020). In the short- and medium-term economic challenges, the pandemic has brought enormous difficulties for governments in terms of the over-demand for medical care and social support from that part of the population that cannot meet its basic needs the pandemic (Frydman & Phelps, 2020)
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