Societal Impact at the Nexus of Community and Entrepreneurship: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead

Abstract

A consensus has emerged around the importance of entrepreneurship to generate societal impact. Yet, there is also increasing recognition of the inability of ventures alone to address the grand societal challenges the world is facing. Attention is shifting to communities as important players in tackling these challenges. For management scholars in general, and entrepreneurship scholars specifically, this calls for a better understanding of the nature of these communities, and the roles they play at the intersection of entrepreneurship and societal impact creation. Yet, community-related research is scattered across the management sciences and lacks a clear framework to guide further inquiry. To address this gap, we conduct a systematic review of the literature published at this intersection in a core set of management, entrepreneurship, and organization sociology journals. Based on this review, we describe how societal impact is generated by entrepreneurial efforts for, in, with, through, and by communities of place, identity, interest, and/or practice, and identify a set of associated roles. Our review identifies trends and omissions in the extant literature, and sets for an evidence-based agenda for future research on the topic. This review yields implications for the field of entrepreneurship, as well as the literature streams on social entrepreneurship, cross-sector collaborations, and community-based entrepreneurship.