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Conceptualizing social entrepreneurship in the context of emerging economies: an integrative review of past research from BRIICS

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Abstract

Social entrepreneurship is well practiced and talked about in emerging economies. However, till date, no dedicated review and conceptual framework exists, synthesizing and integrating past social entrepreneurship research in the fast growing emerging economies, commonly known as BRIICS (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China, and South Africa). The purpose of this article is to bridge that gap by conducting an integrative review of 123 most relevant peer-reviewed scholarly articles, filtered out of 1779 search results in six different research databases. Country-specific conceptual perspectives have been extracted and integrated to formulate a novel social entrepreneurship framework that is inclusive of five key social entrepreneurship dimensions emerging from these economies: (a) Social Welfare, (b) Social Capital, (c) Social Entrepreneur, (d) Economic Value Creation, and (e) Collective Endurance. This exercise was an initiative to facilitate the global community of social entrepreneurship researchers and practitioners in understanding the diversity, meaning, and evolution of the social entrepreneurship phenomenon in the context of emerging economies. They can advance research in this domain with the aid of the proposed framework and the research questions proposed for future research.

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  • 28 April 2018

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Acknowledgements

We thank all the past researchers/authors whose published works (articles, books) were reviewed for writing this paper; without their work, this article would have not come to existence. We also thank the anonymous reviewers whose valuable insights and comments have a significant role to play in finally making this paper a valuable read for future researchers, practitioners, and policy makers.

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Sengupta, S., Sahay, A. & Croce, F. Conceptualizing social entrepreneurship in the context of emerging economies: an integrative review of past research from BRIICS. Int Entrep Manag J 14, 771–803 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11365-017-0483-2

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