Social Entrepreneurship : A Critical Review of the Concept

This paper undertakes an analytical, critical and synthetic examination of quot;social entrepreneurshipquot; in its common use, considering both the quot;socialquot; and the quot;entrepreneurshipquot; elements in the concept. On both points there is a range of use, with significant differences marked out by such things as the prominence of social goals and what are thought of as the salient features of entrepreneurship. The paper concludes with the proposal of a suitably flexible explication of the concept: social entrepreneurship is exercised where some person or persons (1) aim either exclusively or in some prominent way to create social value of some kind, and pursue that goal through some combination of (2) recognizing and exploiting opportunities to create this value, (3) employing innovation, (4) tolerating risk and (5) declining to accept limitations in available resources