Journal of Social Entrepreneurship

Title: Pre-paradigmatic Status of Social Entrepreneurship Research: A Systematic Literature Review
Autor: Othmar M. Lehner, Juha Kansikas

link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19420676.2013.777360

Social entrepreneurship (SE) research has been presented in the literature as a field of action in a pre-paradigmatic state, a field that lacks an established epistemology. Despite that impediment, several qualitative and quantitative studies have already been undertaken on the sole base of some institutions’ worldview and without previous solidification of theory. Consequently, critics and social constructivists have found much ambivalence in these and owing to the resulting mess, even question SE’s legitimization as a distinctive item of research. Articles on the topic of SE make use of a variety of frameworks, borrowing from neo-institutional or dialectic theory, bringing with them different research methods and views from other disciplines. Instead of propos- ing another conceptual approach and yet contributing to the ongoing discussion, the authors enact on a deductive journey by examining and clustering underlying paradigmatic assumptions found in a large-scale sample (>300) of current articles. In comparison to results from the management (entrepreneurship) literature, the study finds statistical evidence to the hypotheses that SE differs in researchers’ paradigms, that seminal SE research transcends the foci on either detached struc- tures or individuals, and that research in SE is often led by advocacy worldviews of the researchers themselves.

Keywords: Social entrepreneurship, methodology, paradigm, research

Title: Social Entrepreneurship Perspectives. Triangulated Approaches to Hybridity
Autor: Othmar M. Lehner

Social Entrepreneurship Perspectives. Triangulated Approaches to Hybridity
Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2012, 94 p.
(Jyväskylä Studies in Business and Economics
ISSN 1457-1986; 111)
ISBN 978-951-39-4661-6 (nid.)
ISBN 978-951-39-4662-3 (PDF)

The main argument in this study is that social entrepreneurship is not a neu- tral and static phenomenon, but socially constructed and loaded with meanings. Hence, it needs to receive adequate attention from more contextual, critical and constructionist viewpoints to deal with the inherent hybridity and ambiguity. It is discussed and argued that –a) current research on social entrepreneurship needs to acknowledge and even put a special emphasis on the cultural, societal and situational contexts in which it is conducted;b) concepts that are produced through social interaction should receive ap- propriate research attention that also acknowledges the ontological and paradig- matical nature of these phenomena; andc) while a variety of entrepreneurial approaches can be identified in social en- trepreneurship, such as for example opportunity recognition, these approaches differ in their actual application, partly due to the double bottom-line between the social and commercial goals.

Keywords: social enterprise, methodology, hybridity, social entrepreneurship, entrepreneural orientation