The multiple faces of social entrepreneurship: A review of definitional issues based on geographical and thematic criteria

Abstract

Social entrepreneurship has recently received greater recognition from the public sector, as well as from scholars. However, the lack of a unifying paradigm in the field has lead to a proliferation of definitions. Moreover, several approaches of the phenomenon, as well as different schools of thought, have emerged in different regions of the world. At first glance, because of different conceptions of capitalism and of the government's role, there seems to be a difference between the American and the European conceptions of social entrepreneurship. The objective of this paper is to clarify the concepts of ‘social entrepreneurship’, ‘social entrepreneur’ and ‘social entrepreneurship organization’ and to examine whether there is a transatlantic divide in the way these are conceived and defined. After having justified the need for a definition, we present the different geographical perspectives. North American and European literatures on social entrepreneurship are critically analysed by means of Gartner's four differentiating aspects: the individual, the process, the organization and the environment. We show that there is no clear-cut transatlantic divide, but that, even within the US, different conceptions coexist. We propose definitions for the main concepts associated with social entrepreneurship and, finally, discuss implications for future research.

Keywords:

• social entrepreneurship
• social entrepreneur
• social entrepreneurship organization
• definitions
• US–Europe comparison

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.

Notes

1. In North America (the years in brackets correspond to the date of creation of the organization): Ashoka (1980), Echoing Green (1987), The Skoll Foundation (1999) and The Manhattan Institute's Social Entrepreneurship Initiative (2001) in the US; the Canadian Centre for Social Entrepreneurship and the Canadian Social Entrepreneurship Foundation in Canada. In Europe: The School for Social Entrepreneurs in the UK (1997) and The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs in Switzerland (1998), among others.

2. We will develop this definition in Section 3.5.

3. The so-called ‘American’ approaches also include certain authors from the UK.

4. The main contributions to the Social Innovation School have been brought by: Alvord, Brown, and Letts (2004), Austin, Stevenson, and Wei-Skillern (2006), Bornstein (1998), Catford (1998), Dart (2004), De Leeuw (1999), Dees (1998a, b), Dees and Battle Anderson (2006), Dearlove (2004), Dorado (2006), Drayton (2002), Guclu, Dees, and Battle Anderson (2002), Mair and Martí (2004, 2006), Mair and Noboa (2006), Mair and Schoen (2007), Peredo and McLean (2006), Roberts and Woods (2005), Robinson (2006), Schuyler (1998), Schwab Foundation (1998), Seelos and Mair (2007), Sharir and Lerner (2006), Sullivan Mort, Weerawardena, and Carnegie (2003), Thompson, Alvy, and Lees (2000), Thompson (2002), Thompson and Doherty (2006), Weerawardena and Sullivan Mort (2006) and Young (1983) (this list is non-exhaustive). In the UK, Leadbeater (1997), Smallbone et al. (2001) and Nicholls (2008) are usually associated with this school, as could be Chell (2007).

5. Main partisans of the Social Enterprise School are: Alter (2004), Boschee (1995), Boschee and McClurg (2003), Cooney (2006), Emerson and Twersky (1996), Haugh (2005), Stryjan (2006) and Tracey and Philips (2007) (this list is non-exhaustive).

6. In 1996, university research centres and researchers from the 15 Member States of the European Union set up a scientific network whose name, ‘EMES’, refers to the title of its first research program on the ‘Emergence of Social Enterprises in Europe’.

7. The words in italic in Appendix 1 summarize these features.

8. As well as the British government.

9. With the exception of the UK where, according to the Community Interest Company legislation, 50% of the total income of a ‘social enterprise’ must be market-based.

10. As clearly stated by Battle Anderson and Dees (2008, 145), ‘earned income’ primarily refers to ‘income derived from selling products or services’ to contrast with the idea of philanthropic donations or government subsidies.