Social Entrepreneurship Research – Challenges, Explanations and Suggestions for the Field Development
Social Entrepreneurship Research – Challenges, Explanations and Suggestions for the Field Development

Summary/Abstract: Employing critical review of the key literature in the area of entrepreneurship and management studies on social entrepreneurship, this paper aims to outline the current challenges this field is facing, also introducing related explanations and suggesting required changes. The field of social entrepreneurship research is at its nascent stage, determined by ongoing definitional debates and low legitimacy in the scholarship, leading to limited theory development. The key challenge lies in the lack of consistent theory and weak research infrastructure. What lies behind these challenges is the complexity and diversity of the social entrepreneurship phenomenon and academic discourses. There are significant institutional and economic differences between individual countries and regions, which in the end constitute the complexity of the phenomenon. The related definitional debate generates challenges in developing the research infrastructure, which is strengthened by functionalist approach. At the same time, there is a strong need to employ the contribution of other, affiliated disciplines, not limited to entrepreneurship and management, feeding on sociology, anthropology, political science, economics. Their conceptual framework, research methods, particularly derived from sociology, may serve as a useful framework for the field development. This may generate scholarly interest in moving towards other research paradigms, employing subjectivist approaches, or assuming radical change in the society. Moving beyond dominant functionalist paradigm may give voice to initiatives and ventures in social entrepreneurship that have so far been marginalized in research. This, in result, could develop social entrepreneurship research field.

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