Connecting the Dots for Social Value: A Review on Social Networks and Social Entrepreneurship

Abstract

The emergence of social entrepreneurship has been explained at the macro-level (socioeconomic drivers), at the meso-level (concepts such as opportunity), and at the micro-level (motivations and intentions of social entrepreneurs). In this conceptual article, it is argued that the sociology of social networks may contribute to explain how and why social entrepreneurship arises by bridging micro- and macro-levels of analysis. Four different usages of the social network concept in the social entrepreneurship literature are identified: embeddedness of social entrepreneurship, collective social entrepreneurship, networking as a critical skill or activity of social entrepreneurship, and finally networking and the creation of social capital as a goal of social entrepreneurship. Theoretical frameworks explaining the emergence of conventional entrepreneurship with a social network lens are identified. These are evaluated with regard to social entrepreneurship and translated into a set of research proposals to be explored in order to strengthen our understanding of social entrepreneurship emergence.

Key Words:

• Social networks
• social entrepreneurship
• embeddedness
• collective entrepreneurship

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the participants of the 5th ISIRC conference (Oxford, 2013) for their valuable insights on an earlier version of this article. We are also grateful to our two anonymous reviewers for their encouraging and insightful comments.

Additional information

Funding

This research was carried out within the framework of an Interuniversity Attraction Pole funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office [grant number 7/42-SOCENT] under the title ‘If Not for Profit, for What and How?’. Frédéric Dufays is a FRESH (Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS) PhD candidate.