SBE special issue introduction

Abstract

1 IntroductionThe future of social entrepreneurship is replete withopportunities to effectively address, and potentiallysolve, some of society’s most pressing issues. Whetherthese problems are found in education, healthcare,housing, energy, or other sectors, it is the socialentrepreneur who rises to the challenge and uses his/her ability to recognize, motivate, and mobilize othersto collectively take action. Moreover, because thesocial entrepreneur often operates in resource-scarceenvironments, he/she is compelled to use creativeapproaches to attract nontraditional resources and toapply those resources in novel ways to the challengesfaced. Finally, it is often the social entrepreneur whoencourages a heightened sense of accountability in theindividuals and communities he/she serves, as well asinstigating the outcomes and impact that are created.Unfortunately, to date, relatively little attention hasbeen paid to understanding the processes by whichsocial entrepreneurs mobilize resources to initiate,develop, and grow their operations. While researcherssuch as Bornstein (2003) provide anecdotal cases andexamples to suggest that social entrepreneurs make dowith the resources they currently possess, there hasbeen little focus on the types of behavior and processesthat enable venture survival and success in terms ofassisting marginalized individuals, groups, and com-munities. Thus, the purpose of this special issue is toaddress many of the gaps within the social entrepre-neurship literature and introduce novel theories andconcepts to stimulate new lines of inquiry. Inconjunction with the seventh annual NYU-SternConference on Social Entrepreneurship, we sought abroad range of theoretically driven and empiricallyfocused research on the role of social entrepreneurs,their firms’ organizational and innovation processes,and their community and global effect.In total, we received over 100 papers from over 30countries for the conference, of which 37 weresubmitted to this special issue. Although the contri-butions represented a variety of viewpoints, perspec-tives, and approaches, research that addressedpersistent issues or provided new approaches andsolutions were particularly welcomed. We begin bydiscussing the five articles selected for this special