Social entrepreneurship: What are we talking about? A framework for future research

Abstract

This paper introduces a framework to guide research and systematically enhance our understanding of social entrepreneurship. Drawing from traditional entrepreneurship literature, the paper presents social entrepreneurial "opportunities" as an important concept to differentiate social entrepreneurship from other social initiatives as well as from business entrepreneurship. It also addresses important issues -level of analysis, methods, and performance measures- that the field will have to attend to if it is to develop into an independent field of research. Finally, the paper argues that a dual approach -combining analytic and systemic thinking- is required to capture the complexity of the phenomenon.