Mapping the Knowledge Structure and Unveiling the Research Trends in Social Entrepreneurship and Inclusive Development: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Several kinds of research from both global and local perspectives have discussed social entrepreneurship and inclusive development. Accordingly, this article aims to highlight the key contributors (authors, institutions, countries, journals) and knowledge structure (co-authorship analysis and cooccurrence-of-keyword analysis) of this research domain. Utilizing the bibliographic data of 300 articles extracted from the Scopus database, we primarily employed Biblioshiny software, resulting in 673 authors from 69 different countries and 496 different institutions. Furthermore, the yearly publication of the 300 documents rose from 1 in 1996 to 24 in 2022, with an average age of 6.08 years and a citation rate of 13.79 yearly. Remarkably, the number of publications on this subject accelerated in 2014. According to the study’s findings, the most productive country in line with research publishing is the USA. The most productive institution has been recognized as the Amrita School of Engineering. The most active author is reported to be Kadol N. The most prolific journal is Entrepreneurship and Regional Development. In addition to this, the top three most frequent terms are ‘social development’, ‘economic development’ and ‘entrepreneur. ‘Social entrepreneurship’, ‘social and economic effects’, ‘sustainable development’ and ‘social development’ are the latest keywords in this field that predict future trends. Taken collectively, this review is an expedient resource for gaining a thorough grasp of the state of the art and prospective routes for future research.