Social entrepreneurship and economic thought: a path to rapprochement

Philip T. Roundy and Michaël Bonnal

Global Business and Economics Review, 2020, vol. 23, issue 3, 257-279

Abstract: Academics, practitioners, and policymakers are devoting heightened attention to social entrepreneurship: the creation and pursuit of innovative opportunities to produce positive externalities that improve conditions harmful to society. Scholars from across the behavioural, managerial, and organisational sciences are increasingly studying social entrepreneurs and their activities. However, one discipline - economics - is underrepresented in social entrepreneurship research. To address the lack of integration between economics and social entrepreneurship, we identify the unique economic characteristics of social entrepreneurship and explain how adopting an economic lens stands to generate important insights about the phenomenon. We then isolate three potential connection points between work in social entrepreneurship and economics: institutional economics and multi-logic hybrid organisations, narrative economics and social entrepreneurship discourse, and the economics of emotion and social entrepreneurs' emotions. Our integration of social entrepreneurship and economics contributes to scholarship in both domains and identifies avenues for research at the intersections of the two disciplines.

Keywords: social enterprise; social innovation; economic theory; externalities; social entrepreneurship; social welfare; economics; hybrid organisations; new ventures. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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