ISSN: 2222-6990
Open access
This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of the previous studies on social entrepreneurship and maps the studies according to publication year and growth, source, language, subject area, countries and institution’s productivity, and also citation metrics. Suggestions for future research based on the four decades of bibliometric analysis are presented towards the end of this paper. The bibliometric analysis was conducted on 1,835 social entrepreneurship articles retrieved from the Scopus database. The articles were published from 1978 until 2021. The software used in the analysis comprised Microsoft Excel for frequency analysis, VOSviewer for data visualization, and Harzing’s Publish or Perish for citation metrics and analysis. The findings show that there has been a tremendous growth of publications on social entrepreneurship over the years, indicating that social entrepreneurship is an emerging research discipline with many potential academic fields to be explored. The subject areas of business, management and accounting are the prominent areas for the social entrepreneurship publication within the context of the Scopus database. This study presents a bird's-eye view of the current trend of social entrepreneurship research globally. The bibliometric analysis indicators from this study serve as a guide to researchers in identifying the most suitable journals for publication, potential collaborators and areas for future research.
Ahmi, A., & Mohd Nasir, M. H. (2019). Examining the trend of the research on extensible business reporting language (XBRL): A bibliometric review. International Journal of Innovation, Creativity and Change, 5(2), 1145-1167.
Aidi Ahmi, R. M. (2019). Bibliometric analysis of global scientific literature on web accessibility. International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering, 7(6), 250-258.
Alvord, S. H., Brown, L. D., & Letts, C. W. (2004). Social entrepreneurship and societal transformation. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 40(3), 260–282. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886304266847
Apadula, L. T., & Predmore, C. E. (2019). The shift to “social”: Social and commercial entrepreneurship must meld to meet changing consumer preferences. Journal of Management Policy and Practice, 20(1).
Austin, J., Stevenson, H., & Wei-Skillern, J. (2006). Social and commercial entrepreneurship: Same, different, or both? Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 30(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6520.2006.00107.xhttps://doi.org/10.33423/jmpp.v20i1.1324
Banks, J. A. (1972). The sociology of social movements. Landon and Basingstoke: Macmillan Education.
Booth, P., Chaperon, S. A., Kennell, J. S., & Morrison, A. M. (2020). Entrepreneurship in island contexts: A systematic review of the tourism and hospitality literature. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 85, 102438. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2019.102438
Campos, V., Sanchis, J.-R., & Ejarque, A. (2019). Social entrepreneurship and economy for the common good: Study of their relationship through a bibliometric analysis. The International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, 21(3), 156-167. https://doi.org/10.1177/1465750319879632
Canestrino, R., ?wiklicki, M., Magliocca, P., & Pawe?ek, B. (2020). Understanding social entrepreneurship: A cultural perspective in business research. Journal of Business Research, 110, 132–143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.01.006
Cardella, G. M., Hernández-Sánchez, B. R., Monteiro, A. A., & Sánchez-García, J. C. (2021). Social entrepreneurship research: Intellectual structures and future perspectives. Sustainability, 13(14), 7532. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13147532
Celebi, D., Pirnar, I., & Eris, E. D. (2020). Bibliometric analysis of social entrepreneurship in gastronomy tourism. Tourism, 68(1), 58–67. https://doi.org/10.37741/t.68.1.5
Cheah, J., Amran, A., & Yahya, S. (2019). External oriented resources and social enterprises’ performance: The dominant mediating role of formal business planning. Journal of Cleaner Production, 236, 117693. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.117693
Dacin, P. A., Dacin, M. T., & Matear, M. (2010). Social entrepreneurship: Why we don’t need a new theory and how we move forward from here. Academy of Management Perspectives, 24(3), 37–57. https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2010.52842950
Dacin, M. T., Dacin, P. A., & Tracey, P. (2011). Social entrepreneurship: A critique and future directions. Organization Science, 22(5), 1203–1213. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1100.0620
Defourny, J., & Nyssens, M. (2010). Conceptions of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship in Europe and the United States: Convergences and divergences. Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 1(1), 32–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/19420670903442053
Donthu, N., Kumar, S., Pandey, N., & Lim, W. M. (2021). Research constituents, intellectual structure, and collaboration patterns in Journal of International Marketing: An analytical retrospective. Journal of International Marketing, 29(2), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1177/1069031x211004234
Durieux, V., & Gevenois, P. A. (2010). Bibliometric indicators: Quality measurements of scientific publication. Radiology, 255(2), 342–351. https://doi.org/10.1148/radiol.09090626
Ferreira, J. J., Fernandes, C. I., Peres-Ortiz, M., & Alves, H. (2016). Conceptualizing social entrepreneurship: Perspectives from the literature. International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, 14(1), 73–93. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12208-016-0165-8
Gupta, P., Chauhan, S., Paul, J., & Jaiswal, M. P. (2020). Social entrepreneurship research: A review and future research agenda. Journal of Business Research, 113, 209–229. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.03.032
Hallock, R. M., & Bennett, T. N. (2020). I’ll read that!: What title elements attract readers to an Article? Teaching of Psychology, 48(1), 26–31. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628320959948
Hidalgo, L. F., Rialp, J., & Urbano, D. (2020). Are there really differences between social and commercial entrepreneurship in developing countries? Handbook of Research on Smart Territories and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems for Social Innovation and Sustainable Growth, 306–325. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-2097-0.ch017
Hota, P. K. (2021). Tracing the intellectual evolution of social entrepreneurship research: Past advances, current trends, and future directions. Journal of Business Ethics. 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04962-6
Hota, P. K., Subramanian, B., & Narayanamurthy, G. (2019). Mapping the intellectual structure of social entrepreneurship eesearch: A citation/co-citation analysis. Journal of Business Ethics. 166(1), 89-114. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04129-4
Iskandar, Y., Joeliaty, J., Kaltum, U., & Hilmiana, H. (2021). Bibliometric analysis on social entrepreneurship specialized journals. WSEAS Transactions on Environment and Development, 17, 941–951. https://doi.org/10.37394/232015.2021.17.87
Chen, J. (2010). Perspective innovation research of global. In Academy of Management Annual Meeting.
Kimmitt, J., & Muñoz, P. (2018). Sensemaking the “social” in social entrepreneurship. International Small Business Journal: Researching Entrepreneurship, 36(8), 859–886. https://doi.org/10.1177/0266242618789230
Lessem, R. (1978). Towards the interstices of management: Developing the social entrepreneur. Management Education and Development, 9(3), 178–188. https://doi.org/10.1177/135050767800900304
Mair, J., & Martí, I. (2006). Social entrepreneurship research: A source of explanation, prediction, and delight. Journal of World Business, 41(1), 36–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb.2005.09.002
Majumdar, S., & Ganesh, U. (2019). Qualitative research in social entrepreneurship: A critique. Methodological Issues in Social Entrepreneurship Knowledge and Practice, 15–38. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9769-1_2
Mottiar, Z. (2016). Exploring the motivations of tourism social entrepreneurs. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 28(6), 1137–1154. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijchm-06-2014-0278
Van Eck, N. J., & Waltman, L. (2017). VOSviewer manual. Manual for VOSviewer version, 1(0). Leiden: Univeristeit Leiden.
Naatu, F., & Alon, I. (2019). Social franchising: A bibliometric and theoretical review. Journal of Promotion Management, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/10496491.2019.1584777
Peredo, A. M., & McLean, M. (2006). Social entrepreneurship: A critical review of the concept. Journal of World Business, 41(1), 56–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb.2005.10.007
Persaud, A., Bayon, M., & Cartmell, S. (2018). Social entrepreneurship research: A bibliometric analysis. Academy of Management Proceedings, 2018(1), 15510. https://doi.org/10.5465/ambpp.2018.15510abstract
Phan Tan, L. (2021). Mapping the social entrepreneurship research: Bibliographic coupling, co-citation and co-word analyses. Cogent Business & Management, 8(1), 1896885. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2021.1896885
Rey-Martí, A., Ribeiro-Soriano, D., & Palacios-Marqués, D. (2016). A bibliometric analysis of social entrepreneurship. Journal of Business Research, 69(5), 1651–1655. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.10.033
Santos, F. M. (2010). A positive theory of social entrepreneurship. SSRN Electronic Journal. 111(3), 335-351. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1553072
Seelos, C., & Mair, J. (2005). Social entrepreneurship: Creating new business models to serve the poor. Business Horizons, 48(3), 241–246. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2004.11.006
Tan, L. P., Pham, L. X., & Bui, T. T. (2020). Personality traits and social entrepreneurial intention: The mediating effect of perceived desirability and perceived feasibility. The Journal of Entrepreneurship, 30(1), 56-80. https://doi.org/10.1177/0971355720974811
Weerawardena, J., & Mort, G. S. (2006). Investigating social entrepreneurship: A multidimensional model. Journal of World Business, 41(1), 21–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb.2005.09.001
Yesmin, A., Kohar, U. H. A., Hira, F., & Moshiul, A. M. (2021). Social entrepreneurship: A bibliometric-based research trend. Turkish Journal of Computer and Mathematics Education, 12(3), 2479–2492. https://doi.org/10.17762/turcomat.v12i3.1240
Zahra, S. A., Gedajlovic, E., Neubaum, D. O., & Shulman, J. M. (2009). A typology of social entrepreneurs: Motives, search processes and ethical challenges. Journal of Business Venturing, 24(5), 519–532. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2008.04.007
Zakaria, R., Ahmi, A., Ahmad, A. H., & Othman, Z. (2020) Worldwide melatonin research: A bibliometric analysis of the published literature between 2015 and 2019, Chronobiology International. 38(1), 27-37.
https://doi.org/10.1080/07420528.2020.1838534
(Sabri et al., 2024)
Sabri, K. N., Mohamad, S. F., Abidin, U. F. U. Z., Ghazali, H., & Ali@Hamid, M. H. (2024). A Four-decade Bibliometric Analysis of Social Entrepreneurship. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 14(3), 825–840.
Copyright: © 2024 The Author(s)
Published by HRMARS (www.hrmars.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seenavc at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode