Social entrepreneurs and social change: tracing impacts of social entrepreneurship through ideas, structures and practices

Abstract

This article introduces a research framework for systematically assessing and comparing the ways social entrepreneurs generate social change. Based on a review of the academic debate, we discuss the requirements for such a framework. We then develop a conceptual framework that focuses on the entrepreneur-environment interaction in two dimensions. The first dimension suggests we think of social space in terms of ideas, structures, and practices. The second dimension captures the dynamic nature of social change. It looks at the interdependencies between entrepreneurs and their environment as they play out at the levels of ideas, structures, and practices over time. We apply this framework to a real-life case and discuss how it may guide case study research.