Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, United Kingdom
What is understood as ‘social’ is highly value-laden and context-dependent, leading to subjective, political and ideological interpretations of the concept. However, social entrepreneurship studies often lack an explicit, differentiated and contextual understanding of their ‘social’, which can affect the validity, transparency and replicability of studies for other scholars. Above all, the predominantly Western orientation of the theories and concepts impairs the effective applicability of theories in emerging contexts such as Latin America, Africa and Asia. With our study, we aim to raise awareness of the need to return to a reflexive engagement with the core concept of discourse, the ‘social’. We do this by developing a (non-exhaustive) conceptual framework as a starting point for future studies that supports scholars by providing an overview of ideological, normative and theoretical choices and factors, as well as phenomenon-related influences to consider when defining the ‘social’ in their work. In doing so, we contribute to the literature on social entrepreneurship by highlighting the (often underestimated) active role of social entrepreneurship scholars in the research process.
