A New Approach to Social Entrepreneurship: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

sustainability Article A New Approach to Social Entrepreneurship: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Alejandro García-Jurado 1, JoséJavier Pérez-Barea 2,* and Rodrigo J. Nova 3   Citation: García-Jurado, A.; Pérez-Barea, J.J.; Nova, R.J. A New Approach to Social Entrepreneurship: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Sustainability 2021,13, 2754. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su13052754 Academic Editor: Ladislav Mura Received: 15 February 2021 Accepted: 27 February 2021 Published: 4 March 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1Department of Computer Science and Numerical Analysis, University of Cordoba, Rabanales Campus, 14071 Córdoba, Spain; alex.gar[email protected] 2Department of Business Management, Faculty of Business Administration, Universidad Loyola Andalucía, Córdoba Campus, 14004 Córdoba, Spain 3School of Veterinary Medicine and Sciences, The University of Nottingham, Sutton Bonington Campus, Leicestershire LE12 5RD, UK; r[email protected] *Correspondence: jjper[email protected] Abstract: All social entrepreneurship experts state that the issue of definition is the main problem affecting research in this field. Although there is no single definition, this is clearly a new domain in the field of research on entrepreneurship. The main objective of this study is to further knowledge in this area by means of a systematic review of scientific literature to determine the conceptual development of social entrepreneurship and to identify the most interesting research trends. This study uses a research method, known as latent semantic analysis (LSA), which has been applied to a database of keywords collected from a rigorous selection of academic articles. The results show that this phenomenon has emerged from two parallel currents within the organization management field; on the one hand, the non-governmental organization (NGO) and voluntary tradition and, on the other, the world of business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The main lines of future research highlighted in the analysis include the measurement of social impact, venture philanthropy, and hybrid organizations. Keywords: social entrepreneurship; social entrepreneur; social enterprise; social innovation; latent semantic analysis; systematic review 1. Introduction Social entrepreneurship is an emerging field with a growing presence in management literature [ 1 ]. Thus, undertaking an on-going review of such literature is required. As seen in the most recent bibliometric studies [ 2 , 3 ], there is a growing interest in furthering knowledge as regards this phenomenon. As shown in Figure 1(which shows the number of scientific paper about social entrepreneurship indexed in Scopus per year), the increased number in recent years of articles and publications confirms the emergence of a new domain that is quickly gaining ground and which aims to respond to a new reality. Social entrepreneurship is generally thought to date back to the late 1970s and is linked to Bill Drayton’s foundation of Ashoka, an organization created to highlight the work of social entrepreneurs. However, academic publications on this field did not appear until the early 1990s. The first significant milestone came in 1991, with a publication that described social entrepreneurs as agents of change with links to the public sector [ 4 ]. The second key milestone came in 1998, when the concept of social entrepreneurship was addressed for the first time [ 5 – 7 ].The force driving such interest emanated from both academia, as seen in the previously mentioned increase in publications, and from public and private organizations [ 8 ]. In terms of public institutions, the European Commission played a pivotal role in this development, launching the Social Business Initiative scheme in 2011 to support the ecosystem of social entrepreneurship in Europe [ 9 ]. To date, there is no agreement on the exact definition of social entrepreneurship and its meaning varies from Sustainability 2021,13, 2754. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13052754 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability Sustainability 2021,13, 2754 2 of 16 one author, or one school of thought, to another [ 10 ]. Nevertheless, almost all acknowledge three different levels of comprehension: a micro level, where the focus is on individual entrepreneurs; a meso level, where the focus is on organizations; and, lastly, a macro level, which focuses on an overall perspective of the economic and social context [11]. Sustainability 2021, 13, x FOR PEER REVIEW 2 of 17 Figure 1. Number of scientific paper about social entrepreneurship indexed in Scopus per year. Social entrepreneurship is generally thought to date back to the late 1970s and is linked to Bill Drayton’s foundation of Ashoka, an organization created to highlight the work of social entrepreneurs. However, academic publications on this field did not appear until the early 1990s. The first significant milestone came in 1991, with a publication that described social entrepreneurs as agents of change with links to the public sector [4]. The second key milestone came in 1998, when the concept of social entrepreneurship was addressed for the first time [5–7].The force driving such interest emanated from both academia, as seen in the previously mentioned increase in publications, and from public and private organizations [8]. In terms of public institutions, the European Commission played a pivotal role in this development, launching the Social Business Initiative scheme in 2011 to support the ecosystem of social entrepreneurship in Europe [9]. To date, there is no agreement on the exact definition of social entrepreneurship and its meaning varies from one author, or one school of thought, to another [10]. Nevertheless, almost all acknowledge three different levels of comprehension: a micro level, where the focus is on individual entrepreneurs; a meso level, where the focus is on organizations; and, lastly, a macro level, which focuses on an overall perspective of the economic and social context [11]. As explained above, the micro-level studies the perspective of social entrepreneurs as individuals. For [12], this type of entrepreneur must: (i) have a mission of creating social value; (ii) identify business opportunities to complete said mission; (iii) pursue a process of on-going innovation; (iv) act boldly; and (v) have a heightened sense of responsibility for socially excluded groups and for the results obtained. For [13], a social entrepreneur is someone who looks for innovative solutions to traditional problems and who has a strong social commitment to the community in which he or she operates. Furthermore, a social entrepreneur is someone who not only aims to solve a problem in a specific place, but who has a more global perspective and looks to create a scalable model; that is, a model that can be replicated in other contexts to maximize its transforming impact [14– 16]. In this respect, [17] associate what drives a social entrepreneur with the idea of a social mission, beyond the desire to make a profit. Social entrepreneurs do not focus on just providing aid; they work to generate sustainable change and authentic social transformation [18]. Social entrepreneurship is also understood on a meso level, where the focus is on the enterprise as an organization. The largely shared definition of a social enterprise is one whose central mission is to have a transforming impact or to create positive social change by means of a business model or activity that enables said mission to be achieved in a Figure 1. Number of scientific paper about social entrepreneurship indexed in Scopus per year. As explained above, the micro-level studies the perspective of social entrepreneurs as individuals. For [ 12 ], this type of entrepreneur must: (i) have a mission of creating social value; (ii) identify business opportunities to complete said mission; (iii) pursue a process of on-going innovation; (iv) act boldly; and (v) have a heightened sense of responsibility for socially excluded groups and for the results obtained. For [ 13 ], a social entrepreneur is someone who looks for innovative solutions to traditional problems and who has a strong social commitment to the community in which he or she operates. Furthermore, a social entrepreneur is someone who not only aims to solve a problem in a specific place, but who has a more global perspective and looks to create a scalable model; that is, a model that can be replicated in other contexts to maximize its transforming impact [ 14 – 16 ]. In this respect, [ 17 ] associate what drives a social entrepreneur with the idea of a social mission, beyond the desire to make a profit. Social entrepreneurs do not focus on just providing aid; they work to generate sustainable change and authentic social transformation [18]. Social entrepreneurship is also understood on a meso level, where the focus is on the enterprise as an organization. The largely shared definition of a social enterprise is one whose central mission is to have a transforming impact or to create positive social change by means of a business model or activity that enables said mission to be achieved in a financially sustainable way, using innovative and replicable business models [ 19 , 20 ]. Under the classic economic model, the mission of a company is to maximize financial gain and utility for shareholders, while the mission of a not-for-profit organization is to maximize social gain and utility. Besides the difference in mission, these types of organization are also sustained in a different way. Traditionally, for-profit companies are sustained by the income generated from their economic activity, while not-for-profit organizations are sustained through charity and philanthropy. The unique feature about a social enterprise is that its mission will be to maximize social gain and utility, but its business model will ensure the organization is financially viable [ 7 , 21 – 25 ]. This new model of organization, which combines the for- and the not-for-profit traditions, is still not properly understood and is more often associated with not-for-profit organizations. Some authors have called social enterprises ‘hybrid organizations’; that is, companies that make the majority of their profit from economic activity, but that also combine it with non-commercial sources of income, such as donations or grants [2,19]. Sustainability 2021,13, 2754 3 of 16 The last of these three levels is the macro level, which explains the relationship between social enterprises and their economic, social and organizational context. In terms of the economic context, external factors have a direct impact on the viability of the organization, including the state of financing systems when seeking funding. All new enterprises (startups), regardless of their business model, need to identify an opportunity based on an existing market and overcome any obstacles in setting up their business. In the case of social enterprises, their chosen social mission will largely define the context in which they operate and their specific difficulties and needs. To overcome these difficulties, experts advocate innovation, traditionally defined as the introduction of new production models or expansion into new markets [ 26 , 27 ]. More specifically, social innovation is directly linked to the nature of social enterprises and was first defined as a means of transforming different needs or ideas relating to change into public-service realities or even into mechanisms for the proper use of public resources [ 4 ]. However, the current definition links the adaptation of ideas about social change with the market, through networks of trust, collaboration or mechanisms of citizen participation [ 20 ]. From this perspective, social innovation is a tool with which to build empowerment and to create innovation ecosystems and networks that generate social value or significant social changes for different communities and stakeholders [28,29]. Despite these developments and the different schools of thought, there is still no agreement among experts as to the exact definition of social entrepreneurship and its conceptual limits. Having said that, experts do agree that it is an emerging field, with enough standing to be considered a domain in its own right, which should be subject to academic study [ 10 , 11 , 30 ]. However, the issue of definition brings with it a more serious problem that this study aims to address. The phenomenon of social entrepreneurship has reignited an age-old debate that has occupied economists throughout history: the nature of economies and enterprises. In this way, researchers along with practitioners are currently investigating a new theory to explain social entrepreneurship [ 10 ]. These authors claim that for many economists, a new theory is not necessary because an enterprise under the classic model is an entity that acts for social reasons [ 31 ] and that making a profit is in fact a social objective because many countries measure their wellbeing based on their per capita income. However, other economists argue that this profit-based economic system has run its course, pointing to the financial crisis, climate change or increasing inequality as proof of this [ 32 ]. The complexity of this matter cannot be fully addressed in one article and, as such, here we will focus on the question of the concept of social entrepreneurship. This approach could serve as a means of understanding the underlying problems of the current economic system. After contextualizing the problem, it is important to mention that the aim of this study is to undertake a systematic review of the literature on social entrepreneurship. This review will clarify the definition of this concept and its limits. The main contributions of this article are: •To identify the most relevant research papers. • To understand the conceptual development of social entrepreneurship and its evolution to date. •To detect future trends and lines of research. •To establish the theoretical limits of this phenomenon. • To contribute a research method based on a quantitative type of meta-analysis looking at the use of keywords. The introduction, which outlines the problem and the main contributions of this article, is followed by a presentation of the data selection criteria and the methodology used. Specifically, a series of articles were selected using a specific search criterion and then uploaded to a database. A new method of analysis, known as latent system analysis (LSA), was then applied and the main results are presented below, in light of current studies and debates. The interpretation of these results offers valuable information about the development of the concept of social entrepreneurship, its limits and evolution over Sustainability 2021,13, 2754 4 of 16 time. Finally, this article points to future trend or lines of research and concludes with a summary of its main contributions. 2. Data and Methodology 2.1. Data Collection As stated above, this article aims to shed light on the conceptualization and limits of social entrepreneurship by means of a systematic literature review. As explained by many authors, a systematic review entails an exhaustive search, evaluation and summary of the available information in order to objectively collect all of the most important information on a specific topic [ 33 – 35 ]. As such, we have used this methodological approach to synthesize results and to draw up a series of conclusions. It is important to note that not all reviews are systematic: only those that follow a logical order when searching for and collecting data can be considered systematic. Furthermore, we also conducted a meta-analysis; that is, a statistical data analysis to obtain aggregated results from individual data [ 36 ]. A method was used for the meta-analysis, known as LSA, which has been tested in previous research projects [ 37 ]. This method is able to discover clusters of related terms and documents in a given collection of documents. It categorizes the results and groups them together according to semantic proximity. In this way, the database has consisted the use of keywords selected articles. It have been chosen keywords because it allows a critical textual analysis of large masses of data [ 38 ]. This study searched for all available papers that contain the phrase “social entrepreneurship”, “social entrepreneur”, “social enterprise” in their article title or author supplied key words from Scopus at the time of March 2016. Using Scopus it is explained by the relevance and accuracy of results against other databases [ 39 ]. The search result was restricted to those academic papers that contain the entire term “social entrepreneurship” rather than just a single word “social” or “entrepreneurship”. We found a total of 882 academic papers which comprised our initial sample of manuscripts. The initial sample was divided in four parts according to the year of publication. Thus, the four periods considered were 2005–09, 2010–11, 2012–13, 2014–16. We started the analysis from 2005 because according to bibliometric studies [ 40 ] is the first year where we found enough articles for a representative sample. We extracted from these 882 papers all the keywords in a compacted form to create the spreadsheets datasets (one for each period). These datasets were used to conduct the data analysis using Latent Semantic Analysis. 2.2. Data Analysis LSA is an emerging text-mining methodology for converting unstructured text (data) into structured data objects aiming to extract and decipher key latent factors existing in the initial unstructured data [ 37 ]. LSA uses techniques from information retrieval, information extraction as well as natural language processing and connects them with the algorithms and methods of data mining, machine learning and statistics [ 41 , 42 ]. LSA has been already employed to define the intellectual structure of several disciplines. Specifically, it has been used to create a taxonomy of the research done in areas as different as operations management [ 43 ] or computing [ 44 , 45 ]. Below, the algorithmic procedure followed in this study is described: 2.2.1. Pre-Processing Stage The preprocessing stage includes the following steps: A Tokenization: the text was split into word tokens taking into account white spaces and non-letter separators. B Standardization: all the words were standardized (transformed into lowercase). C Stopwords: The “stopwords” (which include the trivial English words such as “and”, “the”, “is”, “are”, “a”, and so on) in the identified word list were removed. We employed as the base set of stopwords to those included in the textfixer webpage. Sustainability 2021,13, 2754 5 of 16 D Stemming: the words tokens were reduced into their root forms by trimming their endings. Therefore, variants of the same word were combined and the dimensionality decreased. E The words or tokens (keywords) that appeared only in one manuscript were eliminated reducing in this way the dimensionality of the corpus. 2.2.2. Term Frequency Matrix Transformation The second step was the transformation of the set of words and documents to a term frequency matrix. Each cell of the matrix represents the frequency of occurrences for a particular keyword in a specific research manuscript. We transformed the values in the matrix using the term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) weighting method [ 46 ]. This weighting method increase the relevance of rare keywords and reduce the importance of common words rewarding the uniqueness rather than the commonality of each keyword and manuscript. 2.2.3. Singular Value Decomposition In the third step, the singular value decomposition (SVD) technique is applied over the TF-IDF weighted matrix to decompose it into three matrices: the term-by-factor matrix, the singular value matrix (square roots of eigenvalues), and the document-by-factor matrix. The term-by-factor matrix showed the keywords loadings on a particular latent factor. The document-by-factor matrix presents the manuscript loadings to a particular latent factor. The singular values (square roots of eigenvalues) represented the importance of particular factors. 2.2.4. Interpretation Finally, the results provided by LSA were interpreted in a similar way to that traditionally done in exploratory factor analysis. Hence, each latent factor is linked with its high-loading keywords and manuscripts to help the interpretation procedure. For each period of time, we created a table containing all high-loading keywords and manuscripts sorted by absolute loadings of each latent factor (also sorted according to its corresponding singular value). Then, the factors were labeled by examining the keywords and manuscripts associated to particular factor, interpreting the underlying area of research, and determining an appropriate label for the latent factor 3. 3. Results After applying LSA to the selected keywords, the results were arranged into a series of groups and sub-groups. On the one hand, a series of large groups according to when the article was published: group one (2005–2009); group two (2010–2011); group three (2012–2013); and group four (2014–2016). On the other hand, a series of smaller groups within each time period according to different factors. The order of the factors is very important, as each factor is linked to a relevancy value (eigenvalue); that is, the factor with the highest relevancy value is most representative and best explains the period. For example, in the 2010–2011 period, the first factor has a relevancy value of 10.2 and is explained by a total of 93 articles; that is 66.42% of the analyzed articles. In addition, each factor has been labeled to help identify and distinguish between them. The final important data provided by the results are the set of keywords that explain the specific factor. This is the result of statistical grouping through latent semantic analysis and the words that are used to understand each factor. This is the key finding for identifying different factors and debating their relevance. 3.1. Period 2005–2009 The social sector tradition has a significant influence on this first period from 2005 to 2009. Factor 1 explains most of this period, not only due to the number of articles referenced (60%, 51 of a total of 85) but also due to its value index, positioning it as the Sustainability 2021,13, 2754 6 of 16 most relevant (see Table 1). The five terms are all interlinked and form a single group that we labeled ‘NGO tradition’. In factor 1, the terms that refer to social entrepreneurship (‘socialentrepreneurship’ and ‘socialenterprise’) are linked to those that refer to the nongovernmental organization (NGO) sector (‘ngo’, ‘socialcapit’, and ‘socialeconomi’). As a group, this list of terms suggests a strong connection from the start of the literature between the NGO sector and social entrepreneurship. Table 1. Results for the period 2005–2009. Factor Labelling High-Loadings Terms Manuscripts Eigenvalue Factor 1 “social innovation” Socialinnov, ngo, entrepreneurship, innov, 93 (32.63%) 14.99 socialenterpris Factor 2 “social innovation” Entrepreneurship, innov, socialinnov, small and medium enterprise, social 13 (4.56%) 14.07 Factor 3 “social innovation” Socialinnov, socialentrepreneur, ngo, socialcapit, learn 19 (6.67%) 12.46 Factor 4 “social impact” Socialentrepreneur, socialimpact, socialinnov, socialenterpris, 7 (2.45%) 12-09 socialnetwork Factor 5 “social impact” Ngo, socialentrepreneur, socialimpact, scale, socialvalu 19 (6.66%) 11.78 Factor 6 “social impact” Socialenterpris, thirdsector, csr, socialimpact, scale 68 (23.85%) 11.37 Factor 7 “social impact” Socialvalu, scale, csr, socialcapit, thirdsector 12 (4.21%) 10.75 Factor 8 “sustainability trend” Sustain, socialcapit, socialentrepreneur, socialeconomi, 17 (5.96%) 10.62 Cooper Factor 9 “NGO tradition hybridization” Socialbusi, valuecr, hybridorgan, learn, thirdsector 15 (5.26%) 10.39 Factor 10 “social impact” Network, scale, thirdsector, csr, valuecr 15 (5.26%) 10.31 Factor 11 “sustainability trend” Sustain, socialvalu, ngo, network, valuecr 7 (2.45%) 10.19 Factor 2, despite containing only a small number of articles, is very significant. This second-most-important factor connects social entrepreneurship with another area of study linked to the more traditional business sector. The link between ‘socialentrepreneurship’ and the classic ‘entrepreneurship’, and the terms ‘csr’ and ‘ethic’ is particularly noteworthy. We labeled this group of factors ‘CSR (corporate social responsibility) tradition’. CSR was ‘cooked up’ in the business ethics sector, so the link between them comes as no surprise [ 47 ]. Interestingly, the term ‘ngo’ also appears here. This link could be explained by the fact that, during this period, CSR is still deeply embedded in the social action of traditional companies, where the recipients of such action are mainly NGOs. The following four factors reinforce the first two. We found no significant differences in the results; rather a continuation of the two types of groupings identified in the first and second factor. For example, factor 3 includes the terms ‘socialeconomi’ and ‘ngo’, while factor 4 repeats the pairing ‘ethic’ and ‘csr’. The only difference is the appearance of the term ‘socialventure’ in factor 6, which could, despite its low relevancy, point to a future line of research. 3.2. Period 2010–2011 The analysis came back with 5 factors in this period. The most relevant is explained with 66% of the articles; that is, 93 of a total of 140. The biggest development in this period is the appearance of terms related to the concept of innovation. The most frequent term across the entire period is ‘socialinnov’, which appears in nearly all of the factors. Using a series of qualitative reviews, we can now identify the differences between the clusters in this period, Sustainability 2021,13, 2754 7 of 16 according to the level of analysis [ 11 ]. The first of these clusters focuses on the figure of the social entrepreneur, in contrast to the first period where we mainly saw references to social entrepreneurship or social enterprise (i.e., to the organization or the process), with minimal references to entrepreneurs as individual agents. The term ‘socialentrepreneur’ is linked to the term ‘socialinnov’ and points to project leaders, entrepreneurs, becoming the driving force behind processes of innovation. As such, we labeled these factors ‘social entrepreneur as innovator’ (see Table 2). Table 2. Results for the period 2010–2011. Factor Labelling High-Loadings Terms Manuscripts Eigenvalue Citations Factor 1 “social entrepreneurship as innovator” Socialentrepreneur, socialinnov, socialenterpris, innov, entrepreneurship 93 (66.42%) 10.2 Factor 2 “social impact” Socialcapit, socialimpact, socialentrepreneur, entrepreneurship, innov 7 (5.00%) 9.10 Factor 3 “social entrepreneur as innovator” Socialinnov, socialentrepreneur, innov, socialeconomi, thirdsector 21 (15.00%) 8.80 Factor 4 “social entrepreneur as innovator” Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur, innovater, socialinnov, thirdsector 12 (8.57%) 8.57 Factor 5 “social entrepreneur as innovator” Socialentrepreneur, socialinnov, entrepreneurship, socialimpact, govern 7 (5.00%) 7.85 The second-most-relevant factor includes the term ‘socialimpact’, which points to a new line of future research and is also linked to the terms ‘socialentrepreneur’, ‘innov’, and ‘socialcapit’ (factor 2). Interestingly, the term ‘ngo’ disappears in this period, although we continue to find the term ‘thirdsector’ (factor 3) and references to ‘csr’. Anecdotally, the term ‘govern’ features heavily in factor 4. 3.3. Period 2012–2013 An increased number of terms and areas of study complicate the analysis of results from this period, and the groupings are less clearly defined than in the first two periods. These results show that the study of entrepreneurship is evolving, in terms of both an increase in publications and in new lines of research and approaches. For the first time, there are multiple factors with a high level of relevancy, formed by large numbers of articles. Factor 1 accounts for 34% of the articles (72 of a total of 208) and factor 2 follows with 28% and a total of 58 articles (see Table 3). Throughout this period, the two traditions from the first period, the NGO and the CSR, continue. However, the big difference is that these traditions are increasingly intertwined, have fewer differences, and have a unifying concept, the term ‘sustainability’, which we identify as a trend toward hybridization. The first factor in terms of importance includes the following terms: ‘csr’, ‘sustain’, ‘socialrespons’, ‘ngo’, and ‘sociaentrepreneurship’. In previous factors, the difference between ‘csr’ and ‘ngo’ was quite clear, but in this factor it is not. This factor points to an interesting question in its own right, which will be explored in greater depth in the discussion: the hybridization of these different models united by their focus on sustainability. In light of this, we have labeled the factors in this period following the two traditions in the first period, but with a strong focus on hybridization (see Table 3). The second factor also includes the term ‘sustain’ and appears to be linked to the tradition of the first period, where there is a very clear difference between the two factors. However, Sustainability 2021,13, 2754 8 of 16 this time ‘socialenterpris’ is linked to the terms ‘thirdsector’ and ‘socialeconomi’, forming another marker of hybridization. Table 3. Results for the period 2012–2013. Factor Labelling High-Loadings Terms Manuscripts Eigenvalue Citations Factor 1 “CSR tradition hybridization” Csr, sustain, socialrespons, ngo, socialentrepreneurship 72 (34.61%) 13.30 Factor 2 “Ngo tradition hybridization” Socialeconomi, thirdsector, socialenterpris, sustain, socialrespons 58 (27.88%) 11.53 Factor 3 “Ngo tradition hybridization” Socialinnov, socialentrepreneur, thirdsector, venturephilanthropi, sustain 11 (5.28%) 10.81 Factor 4 “Ngo tradition hybridization” Socialinnov, socialeconomi, thirdsector, socialentrepreneur, legitimaci 17 (81.73%) 10.31 Factor 5 “Ngo tradition hybridization” Socialentrepreneur, socialcapit, socialinnov, socialeconomi, thirdsector 3 (1.44%) 9.91 Factor 6 “Ngo tradition hybridization” Socialentrepreneur, ngo, entrepreneurship, sustainabledevelop, socialrespons, 13 (6.25%) 9.73 Factor 7 “Sustainability trend” Sustain, entrepreneuri, institut, sustainabledevelop, socialentrepreneurship 24 (11.53%) 9.52 Factor 8 “Ngo Tradition Hybridization” Poverti, venturephilanthropi, povertyallevi, socialvalu, entrepreneuri 10 (4.80%) 9.20 The third factor includes a new term ‘venturephilanthropi’ that, interestingly, is linked to ‘socialinnov’, ‘thirdsector’, and ‘sustain’. There is no mention of social enterprises or the process of entrepreneurship and the term sustainability features heavily, following the trend seen in factors 1 and 2. The other factors are less relevant, but the appearance of new terms is worth a mention. As with previous factors, these new terms could be indicative of small gaps or future lines of research. Factor 4 includes the term ‘legitimaci’; factors 6 and 7 include the term ‘sustainabledevelop’; and in factor 8, we find two terms that are conceptually quite similar ‘poverti’ and ‘povertyallevi’, together with ‘venturephilanthropi’ and ‘socialvalue’. 3.4. Period 2014–2016 This period has the most articles (285 analyzed in total) and the most factors (11), some of which are formed of a high percentage of articles, but have no significant relevance. For instance, factor 6 is explained by 24% of the articles, a total of 68, and sits in sixth place. As a general trend, terms associated with social innovation and measuring social impact are particularly noteworthy. Most of the factors are grouped around these terms, with terms referring to ‘social value’ or ‘socialcapital’ being especially prevalent (see Table 4). The first factor in order of relevance is explained by 33% of the articles (93 out of 285). The terms grouped under this factor are ‘socialinnov’, ‘ngo’, ‘entrepreneurship’, ‘innov’, and ‘socialenterpris’. These results show that social innovation and hybrid elements continue to surpass all others. As such, there are few new developments in this respect compared to the previous period. The second factor follows the same trend seen in the first; as does the third, but with the addition of the term ‘learn’. These first three factors have been grouped together under the label ‘social innovation’. Factors 5, 6 and 7 all include the term ‘scale’, which is very closely linked to the terms ‘socialimpact’, ‘socialvalu’ and, ‘socialcapit’. We grouped them together under the label ‘social impact’. The remaining factors cover the hybridization highlighted in the previous period, with the term ‘hybridorgan’ appearing in factor 9. This factor is also of interest because it is accompanied by the concept ‘socialbusi’, which had not appeared until now and could lend weight to this trend of social or hybrid Sustainability 2021,13, 2754 9 of 16 businesses. Another term that is repeated across the period is ‘sustain’ (factors 8 and 11). This trend continues from the third period although it appears to be losing relevance. Table 4. Results for the period 2014–2016. Factor Labelling High-Loadings Terms Manuscripts Eigenvalue Citations Factor 1 “Social innovation” Socialinnov, ngo, entrepreneurship, innov, socialenterpris 93 (32.63%) 14.99 Factor 2 “Social innovation” Entrepreneurship, innov, socialinnov, small and medium enterprise, social 13 (4.56%) 14.07 Factor 3 “Social innovation” Socialinnov, socialentrepreneur, ngo, socialcapit, learn 19 (6.67%) 12.46 Factor 4 “Social impact” Socialentrepreneur, socialimpact, socialinnov, socialenterpris, socialnetwork 7 (2.45%) 12.09 Factor 5 “Social impact” Ngo, socialentrepreneur, socialimpact, scale, socialvalu 19 (6.66%) 11.78 Factor 6 “Social impact” Socialenterpris, thirdsector, csr, socialimpact, scale 68 (23.85%) 11.37 Factor 7 “Social impact” Socialvalu, scale, csr, socialcapit, thirdsector 12 (4.21%) 10.75 Factor 8 “ Sustainability trend” Sustain, socialcapit, socialentrepreneur, socialeconomi, cooper 17 (5.96%) 10.62 Factor 9 “Ngo tradition hybridization” Socialbusi, valuecr, hybridorgan, learn, thirdsector 15 (5.26%) 10.39 Factor 10 “Social impact” Network, scale, thirdsector, csr, valuecr 15 (5.26%) 10.31 Factor 11 “Sustainability trend” Sustain, socialvalu, ngo, network, valuecr 7 (2.45%) 10.19 4. Discussion As [ 48 ] suggest, although the limits of the concept are not clearly defined, social entrepreneurship is an area of study in its own right and with its own identity that can be approached scientifically. In fact, according to [ 7 ], the novelty lies in the term ‘social entrepreneurship’ not in the concept itself, which has appeared in various guises over time. For [ 48 ], social entrepreneurship is a domain made up of multiple sub-concepts: (i) the creation of social value; (ii) the social entrepreneur; (iii) the organization focus; (iv) market orientation and; (v) social innovation. Fortunately, there is a range of similar, well-established studies in the traditional entrepreneurial sector. Entrepreneurial spirit has always attracted a great deal of interest [ 49 , 50 ]. For some, going beyond the semantics of definition, the real interest lies in the meaning of a socially constructed phenomenon with different levels [ 51 ] and, in turn, in identifying themes and patterns. In order to study certain concepts, the level of analysis from which data is collected is very important [ 52 ]. Studying entrepreneurship through the study of individuals, collecting data from the entrepreneurs themselves, is not the same as studying aggregated data on entrepreneurial activity from different regions or countries. According to the analyzed results, the concept of social entrepreneurship emerged within two broad trends or lines of research: the study of not-for-profit organizations and the area of business ethics. This double logic continues through all the periods analyzed in this study. However, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify as new sub-groups and trends arise over time or new concepts and trends are introduced. 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