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Designing a global standardized methodology for measuring social entrepreneurship activity: the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor social entrepreneurship study

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Abstract

Although there is a high level of practitioner, policymaker, and scholar interest in social entrepreneurship, most research is based on case studies and success stories of successful social entrepreneurs in a single country. We develop a methodology to measure population-based social entrepreneurship activity (SEA) prevalence rates and test it in 49 countries. Our results provide insights into institutional and individual drivers of SEA. Using the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) methodology of Total Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA), we find that countries with higher rates of traditional entrepreneurial activity also tend to have higher rates of social entrepreneurial activity. We develop a broad definition of social entrepreneurship and then explore types based on social mission, revenue model, and innovativeness.

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Notes

  1. Lessons from the U.K. data collection are nicely described in Levie et al. (2006).

  2. Weights are based on age and gender structure for every country. In addition, other characteristics such as education and ethnicity are captured in the weights if appropriate. Most countries adopt a regional stratification to make sure that all regions are represented in the sample.

  3. Given the focus of this paper on the measurement of social entrepreneurship, a more detailed description of the GEM NES data is beyond the scope of this paper. We refer to www.gemconsortium.org for more detailed description of the GEM NES on social entrepreneurship.

  4. The 2009 GEM executive report (Bosma and Levie 2010) section of “A Global Comparison of Social Entrepreneurship” includes slightly different estimates due to the fact that some skip logics weren’t followed in the data used in the original report. The present version is based on a full cleaning of the data.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the participants of the 6th Annual Satter Conference on Social Entrepreneurship for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. We are also very grateful to Jill Kickul and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments to develop the paper. We thank GERA and the entire GEM community for their support and dedication in collecting and processing the data. Portions of this article appear, with permission, in the 2011 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Social Entrepreneurship Report.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, Reep 1, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Jan Lepoutre

  2. Instituto de Empresa Business School, Maria de Molina 12, Planta Baja, 28006, Madrid, Spain

    Rachida Justo

  3. Department of Management and Entrepreneurship, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, 1309 E. 10th Street, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA

    Siri Terjesen

  4. Utrecht School of Economics, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Niels Bosma

  5. Global Entrepreneurship Research Association, London, UK

    Niels Bosma

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  1. Jan Lepoutre
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  4. Niels Bosma
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Correspondence to Jan Lepoutre.

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Lepoutre, J., Justo, R., Terjesen, S. et al. Designing a global standardized methodology for measuring social entrepreneurship activity: the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor social entrepreneurship study. Small Bus Econ 40, 693–714 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-011-9398-4

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