Organized Chaos: Mapping the Definitions of Social Entrepreneurship

ABSTRACT

Over the last 20 years, social entrepreneurship has attracted the attention of researchers from a wide variety of disciplines which has generated a great range of definitions of the term social entrepreneurship. This paper maps the existing definitions, using a citation map and cluster analysis methods. Studying 307 documents in total, the analysis reveals that – contrary to what has been commonly believed – there does, in fact, exist widespread consensus within the academic community on the definition and meaning of the term social entrepreneurship and it is primarily centred on the combination of social and financial goals, community ideals and innovation.

KEYWORDS:

• Social entrepreneurship
• citation map
• cluster analysis
• social enterprise
• social innovation
• social entrepreneur

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. A list of all definitions can be requested from the authors. These definitions have not been included in the paper due to space limitations.