A Co-Citation and Co-Word Analysis of Social Entrepreneurship Research

Abstract

This article aims to provide the intellectual structure and the evolution of research themes in social entrepreneurship. The authors deploy co-citation and co-word analyses to scrutinise 1278 social entrepreneurship research from the Web of Science database. In the co-citation analysis, five themes in social entrepreneurship are identified. These include the concept development of social entrepreneurship and social enterprise; bricolage and issues related to management in social entrepreneurship; opportunity recognition, motivation and intention; social innovation in social entrepreneurship; and institutional contexts. After that, the co-word analysis is used to comprehend the evolution of each research theme and to uncover potential future research directions. This research contributes to social entrepreneurship literature by combining co-citation analysis and keyword analysis to determine the literature structure and potential research directions.

Keywords:

• Social entrepreneurship
• co-word analysis
• co-citation analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research is funded by Vietnam National Foundation for Science and Technology Development (NAFOSTED) under grant number [502.02-2019.03].