Social entrepreneurship: towards conceptualisation

TLDR

Social entrepreneurship, a growing field that blends marketing and entrepreneurship, remains poorly understood despite its increasing importance. The paper aims to conceptualize social entrepreneurship as a multidimensional construct that integrates virtuous behavior, unified purpose, and innovative decision‑making. It defines the construct through dimensions of virtuous behavior, coherent purpose‑action unity, opportunity recognition, and innovative, proactive, risk‑taking decision traits. © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications.

Abstract

Abstract The marketing in strategy dialogue and the emerging marketing/entrepreneurship interface paradigm stress the need for marketers to research entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneur‐ship, the entrepreneurship leading to the establishment of new social enterprises and the continued innovation in existing ones, is much discussed but little understood and given the increasing importance of such organisations should be addressed. This paper conceptualises social entrepreneurship as a multidimensional construct involving the expression of entrepreneurially virtuous behaviour to achieve the social mission, a coherent unity of purpose and action in the face of moral complexity, the ability to recognise social value‐creating opportunities and key decision‐making characteristics of innovativeness, proactiveness and risk‐taking. The paper discusses implications for policy and practice and concludes with a consideration of theoretical issues and directions for future research. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications