Evolution and challenges of the social enterprise

Abstract

This article is a review of the academic productions about Social Enterprise (SE) through bibliometric indicators, such as most cited articles and authors, number of publications, institutions, countries, and keywords, to shed light on the concept of SE and find new research lines. The 50 most cited articles were structured into 4 categories: I) entrepreneurship, II) innovation, III) organization, and IV) impact measurement. Objective: The bibliometric review aims to clarify the concept of SE in the literature through a variety of definitions, and to find new lines of research on the concept. Methodology: The database of 3,113 publications between 2013-2023 was retrieved from Web of Science (WoS) and analyzed with the software VOSviewer. Results: The analysis identified four research lines of SE, which allow the observation of the multidimensionality of the SE concept and that point to new research lines. Limitations: Given its importance in the scholar world, Web of Science is the main source of information in this paper, besides Google Scholar. Further and in greater depth analysis of the SE concept is required using other databases such as Scopus. The same applies to the results of clustering. Practical implications: The findings can reveal some useful knowledge and skills that universities and business schools, as innovation drivers, should transfer to social entrepreneurs as leaders of an SE. Keywords: conceptualization; bibliometric analysis; social enterprise; citation analysis; content analysis