Abstract
The purpose of this article is to provide an insight into the specifics of social entrepreneurship in different business environments. The article, therefore, examines selected characteristics of social enterprises, namely social value, innovations, and market activities. In addition, differences in the start-up and operational phases of social enterprises were measured. Social enterprises must operate in a specific business context, which essentially hinders or promotes social entrepreneurship. As culture differs between north-western and south-eastern Europe, it is important to examine the differences in social entrepreneurship between these two groups of countries. To analyze the proposed characteristics, we used the latest data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor special report on social entrepreneurship. The results indicate that there exist differences in social impact measurement between observed groups of countries. Additionally, we confirmed differences between the observed groups of countries in terms of innovations and market activity of social enterprises in the operational phase. Our results also suggest that social entrepreneurship is more developed in north-western European countries than in south-eastern ones, with some elements in the north-western countries being more noticeable in the operational phase compared to the start-up phase.
Highlights
According to Bonfanti et al [14], social entrepreneurship is generally understood as the process by which entrepreneurs pursue a social mission (e.g., [3,15,16]), which can be expressed in terms of social change [17], social transformation [18], social value creation (e.g., [1,19,20,21,22]), or social impact, and which aims to solve social problems and needs (e.g., [4,23]) or to create social rather than personal and shareholder wealth [22]
The science of social entrepreneurship is characterized by a substantial debate on the definitional, theoretical, and methodological challenges posed by the fact that social entrepreneurship comes from different disciplines and fields [21]
Foss, and Linder [110], offer a multilevel framework that shows how research efforts in the field of social entrepreneurship can be linked and what insights about social entrepreneurship on one analytical level imply for the other levels
Summary
Social entrepreneurship has emerged as a global phenomenon and has received attention in the literature over the last three decades (e.g., [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]) as an important tool for addressing social challenges and responding to those challenges when the market and the public sector fail to do so. interest in social entrepreneurship has increased significantly, there is still a lack of clear definition (e.g., [11,12,13]) due to the diverse approaches to the issues. According to Bonfanti et al [14], social entrepreneurship is generally understood as the process by which entrepreneurs pursue a social mission (e.g., [3,15,16]), which can be expressed in terms of social change [17], social transformation [18], social value creation (e.g., [1,19,20,21,22]), or social impact, and which aims to solve social problems and needs (e.g., [4,23]) or to create social rather than personal and shareholder wealth [22]. The core of social entrepreneurship is its non-profit character, which aims to create sustainable value and social change in social issues in society (e.g., [22,24,25]). Several authors (e.g., [12,13,26]) understand social entrepreneurship as a concept with several dimensions or sub-concepts, including social entrepreneurs, social enterprise, social value creation, market orientation, and innovation
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