Social Entrepreneurship Research Trend: Peeking Through a Theoretical and Conceptual Lens | Original Article

ABSTRACT:

This paper examines scholarly research papers on definitions and conceptual theories with the purpose to find evolutionary patterns in social entrepreneurship research field. A total of 139 conceptual and theoretical research papers were filtered out from total bigger drawn pool of 549 research papers on social entrepreneurship and social enterprise research field and quantitative analysis was carried out. It is concluded that due to lack of consensus on definitions and conceptual frameworks in this research field, concrete theory development followed by validation has not been there as much as compared to traditional entrepreneurship research field. Though there has been significant increase in theoretical and conceptual research in this field, there have been vast disagreements on the boundaries of this field. More rigorous and formal research work is required to build consensus to take this field forward. This study will provide theoretical and conceptual research trend to research scholars, which may provide future research direction in this field to create consensus on the boundary of this research field.