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Social Enterprise JournalSocial enterprise and social entrepreneurship research and theory: A bibliometricanalysis from 1991 to 2010Maria L. Granados Vlatka Hlupic Elayne Coakes Souad Mohamed
Article information:To cite this document:Maria L. Granados Vlatka Hlupic Elayne Coakes Souad Mohamed, (2011),"Social enterprise and socialentrepreneurship research and theory", Social Enterprise Journal, Vol. 7 Iss 3 pp. 198 - 218Permanent link to this document:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17508611111182368
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Social enterprise and socialentrepreneurship research
and theoryA bibliometric analysis from 1991 to 2010
Maria L. Granados, Vlatka Hlupic, Elayne Coakes andSouad Mohamed
Westminster Business School, University of Westminster, London, UK
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a detailed analysis of the social enterprises (SE) andsocial entrepreneurship (SEship) literature that has been published in international journals from 1991 to2010, determining the intellectual structure of both fields and their maturity as academic fields of study.Design/methodology/approach – Using a quantitative methodology for literature study, namedbibliometric analysis, relevant papers were obtained from three important international databases,and SE and SEship journals. An initial number of 1,343 records were identified and, after applyingvarious filters, a total of 286 papers were studied for bibliometric indicators and epistemologicalorientation.Findings – The study identified a significant increase in the scholarly investigation of SE and SEshipin recent years, together with greater collaboration and international research. It was demonstratedthat some countries are dominating the SE and SEship research area, such as the UK and the USA,whereas institutional and individual research output is spread more equally. Currently, no author orinstitution dominates the SE and SEship literature. The epistemological orientation suggests that thepublished literature is largely of a theoretical and descriptive nature in both fields, with only a smallnumber of predictive papers.Originality/value – This paper provides important contributions. First, it presents an intellectualstructure of SE and SEship as a discipline. Second, it determines the current maturity of the field basedon its epistemological orientation, concluding that SE and SEship are maturing, with theorydevelopment followed by empirical testing and validation generating an increase in consensus on theboundaries of the field.
Keywords Journals, Social enterprise, Social entrepreneurship, Epistemology, Bibliometric analysis,Research methods, Field maturity
Paper type Research paper
1. IntroductionThe development of a bibliometric study of the social enterprise (SE) and socialentrepreneurship (SEship) literature requires having a distinctive definition of bothconcepts. However, the definitions of SE and SEship seem to have different versionsdue to diverse academic backgrounds, geographic locations, and the economicdevelopmental context of the countries (Defourny and Nyssens, 2006; Kerlin, 2009).Therefore, there is still an ongoing debate among practitioners and academics over theexact definitions of SE and SEship (Alter, 2003; Dart, 2004; Haugh, 2005; Defourny andNyssens, 2006; Hockerts, 2006; Spear, 2006; Jones, 2007; Peattie and Morley, 2008;Thompson, 2008; Mair and Marti, 2009; Robinson et al., 2009).
For the purpose of this study the authors have developed the following workingdefinitions:
Social entrepreneurship is the activity developed by individuals or groups of people to create,sustain, distribute and/or disseminate social or environmental value in innovative ways
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available atwww.emeraldinsight.com/1750-8614.htm
Social Enterprise JournalVol. 7 No. 3, 2011pp. 198-218r Emerald Group Publishing Limited1750-8614DOI 10.1108/17508611111182368
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through enterprise operations, which could be either a social enterprise, non-profit, privateor public institution.
Social enterprise is an organizational form with primarily social drivers that undertakesinnovative business operations in order to be auto-sustainable and guarantees the creation,sustainment, distribution and/or dissemination of social or environmental value. Therefore,economic drivers are means to a social end, not the end in itself.
Despite the lack of conceptual boundaries for the sector, this paper is moving forwardto provide an analysis of the research patterns that the field is following, accordingto its production of scientific publications, and concludes with discussion both onconceptual and empirical matters.
Through a bibliometric analysis, this paper presents a detailed examination of theSE and SEship literature that has been published in refereed international journalsfrom 1991 to 2010. Relevant papers were retrieved from three important internationaldatabases: ISI Web of Knowledge, Business Source Complete, and Science Direct,in addition to papers published in Social Enterprise Journal and Journal of SocialEntrepreneurship. This led to an initial collection of 1,343 records. After applyingvarious filters to identify the relevance of these papers to the research topic, only 286were actually accepted and studied.
In this paper the introduction is followed by a review of SE and SEship bibliometricstudies. The methodology section leads into the presentation of data and analysis, andthe paper closes with a discussion, recommendations for further research, andconclusions.
2. A review of SE and SEship bibliometric studiesThis paper adopted a descriptive research approach by means of bibliometric analysisthat gave an overview of the intellectual structure of the fields of SE and SEship.Moreover, the analysis led to the identification of meaningful structures and patternsin, for instance, authorship, journals, epistemological orientation, and geographicalproduction.
Five studies were identified during this research that analysed some characteristicsof SE and SEship publications (see Table I for research settings). Although some ofthem were used to compare the findings of this research, none of them presented aformal bibliometric description of the SE and SEship literature that permit a cross-comparison of results.
The first paper located was originated by Desa (2007), who undertook a citationanalysis and identified 70 peer-reviewed articles related to SEship. The maincontribution of his work was the identification of four streams in the SE literature,namely: definitional, resource-constrained environments, governance regulations, andperformance metrics; and the definition of formal prepositions for future research.However, the use of only one database restricted the number of papers, and theirfurther interpretation, to just 70 papers.
The second study was an analysis of literature on societal change approachesdeveloped by Douglas (2008). In this work, a short description of SEship literature andthe research methodologies used were included. The study identified that case studiesand surveys were the most employed methodologies when undertaking SEshipresearch. Nonetheless, these results may not reflect a true representation of SEshipresearch behaviour since just 20 papers were analysed.
The third article identified was a more structured citation analysis of SEshippublications. Short et al. (2009) presented a review and critique of SEship research,
199
SE and SEshipresearch and
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Ref
eren
ces
Key
wor
ds
Dat
abas
eP
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earc
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mit
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eur;
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;S
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lyjo
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itio
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cs)
For
mal
pro
pos
itio
ns
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rere
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chon
SE
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gla
s(2
008)
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ship
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ofS
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ce19
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lyjo
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es57
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tifi
ed,
20an
aly
sed
Res
earc
hm
eth
ods
use
don
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reS
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tet
al.
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9)S
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ip;
SE
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E;
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ial
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ture
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SC
O;
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ofk
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ence
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-200
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esO
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rnal
arti
cles
152
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earc
hd
omai
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tera
ture
Cit
atio
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Cat
egor
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nce
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alan
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pir
ical
Del
imit
ated
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nd
arie
sof
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ship
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arch
Hoo
gen
doo
rnet
al.
(201
0)S
Esh
ip;
SE
neu
r;S
E;
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ial
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ture
Web
ofK
now
led
ge
Not
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tion
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2009
On
lyp
eer-
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iew
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rnal
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tifi
ed,
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ical
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our
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ools
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oug
ht
inS
Esh
ipli
tera
ture
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let
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0)S
Esh
ip;
SE
neu
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E;
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mu
nit
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terp
rise
;S
ocia
lv
entu
re
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icse
arch
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mie
r;B
usi
nes
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urc
ep
rem
ier;
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nL
it
1968
-200
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nly
jou
rnal
arti
cles
212
Sem
anti
cn
etw
ork
pat
tern
sof
SE
ship
mea
nin
gE
mer
gin
gsc
hoo
lsof
thou
gh
t
Sourc
e:
Ori
gin
ated
by
the
auth
or
Table I.Studies of publicationson SE literature
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and drew some conceptual boundaries. Moreover, the paper displays an initialclassification of papers into conceptual and empirical. They concluded that conceptualarticles exceed in number empirical studies, and that empirical works often lack formalhypotheses and proper methodologies.
The next paper relating to SE research production was presented by Hoogendoornet al. (2010). Although the main emphasis of this work was on empirical articles ofSEship only, the paper presented a unique classification of 31 empirical articles byschool of thought and by elements of new venture creation.
Lastly, the most recent paper is from Hill et al. (2010). Despite their principalobjective being not describing SE research production, their work drew upon thecentring resonance analysis approach, identifying patterns of conceptual coherenceamong SEship literature. Within this process, the authors went through the academicpapers on SEship and concluded that there were no authors or journals that dominatedthe emerging SEship literature.
All these papers had in common the conclusion that SE and SEship literature is stillin a development stage, where more formal, rigorous, and empirical research methodsare required. Despite these important findings, a comprehensive and complete study ofSE and SEship publications through a bibliometric study was required.
3. MethodologyThe quantitative study of literature has been given different terms in the literature,although there are three that refer exactly to this study. These are bibliometric,scientometric, and infometric.
The coining of the term “bibliometric” is frequently credited to Pritchard (1969,p. 348) who defined it as “the application of mathematical and statistical methods tobooks and other media of communication”. A modern definition is given by VanLeeuwen (2004, p. 374) “the field of science that deals with the development andapplication of quantitative measures and indicators for sciences and technology,based on bibliographic information”. The term “scientometric” is referring to allquantitative aspects of the science of science, communication on science, and sciencepolicy (Hood and Wilson, 2001). However, much of scientometric is indistinguishablefrom bibliometric since the immediate and tangible output of science and technologyinto the public domain is through academic papers. The later, “infometric”, has beenidentified as the most general of the three terms, including also non-scholarlycommunities in which information is produced, communicated, and used (Ingwersenand Christensen, 1997).
Although the three terms present some overlap in meaning, they are not necessarilysynonymous. Defining which term is going to be used is a decision that Hood andWilson (2001) leave to each researcher. Therefore, for the purpose of this research, theterm bibliometric is used due to the larger body of literature available for itsimplementation, the use of scholarly databases and, the disposition of SE and SEshipto be studied by social science, rather than science literature.
The following two search terms were studied: “Social Enterprise*” and “SocialEntrepreneur*”. These were included in the study derived from reading numerousarticles, books, and conference proceedings, and the previous analysis of relatedarticles. The use of the asterisk (*) as a truncation symbol allowed the databases tolook for different endings of the word, for example, SE or SEship. Other wordssuggested by the literature, such as, community enterprise and social venture werenot included due to the initial purpose of this study and the pertinence to the central
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discussion. Therefore, only articles that explicitly mentioned the two words weresearched.
The sources of information recommended by systemic review methodologies aredatabases, where the most important source of information for extensive bibliometricanalyses of the social sciences literature is considered to be the Social Science CitationIndex, produced by the former Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) (Van Leeuwen,2006). However, literature on bibliometric studies had argued against this statement.For instance, a bibliometric analysis of social science research demonstrated that thisliterature has a poor coverage on the ISI Web of Knowledge database, both in terms ofthe types of literature covered as well as in the scope of the journals covered (Glanzel,1996; Hicks, 1999; Nederhof, 2006). Moreover, ISI has been criticized for its lowreliability, for example, in terms of language and geography (MacRoberts andMacRoberts, 1989; Nederhof, 2006; Kousha and Thelwall, 2008; Sanderson, 2008;Harzing and Van Der Wal, 2009).
In addition to reliance on ISI source serials, Nederhof (2006) recommended theinclusion of non-ISI source serials and, if the analysis wants to monitor the utility ofresearch, publications directed at a non-scholarly public. Following thisrecommendation, this research included two more databases related to social scienceliterature and business, namely, “Business Source Complete” and “Science Direct”. Inorder to access publications directed to SE practitioners and academics, articles fromSocial Enterprise Journal and Journal of Social Entrepreneurship were also included,which are not indexed by the three databases consulted due to their early stage andsmall number of publications.
Given that SE and SEship are relatively recent research themes, the search includedevery article on the subjects and, hence, examined every possible year. Summarizing,Table II presents the general characteristics of the bibliometric study, and thus allowsother researchers to replicate the study.
Entering the query for the search terms, a total of 1,343 bibliographic records wereretrieved. Employing Bibexcel software, a toolbox for manipulating bibliographic data(Persson, 2002), the records were organized and selected according to the followingfilters: language (only English and Spanish papers, covering 98 per cent of all records),duplicated records, journal articles, search words on abstract, title and keywords, andrelevance to the study subject. Through these procedures a total of 284 relevant paperswere selected.
The last step in producing the final dataset was checking for missing papers bycomparing them with the references listed in the articles mentioned at the beginning ofthis paper. Two papers were identified that needed to be added because they met thesearch criteria that has been applied. Other papers included in those articles wereconference proceedings that were not studied by this bibliometric work.
Search words “Social enterprise*” or “Social entrepreneur*”Development date February 2011Databases Business Source Complete (BSC)
Science Direct (SD)Web of Knowledge (ISI)Social Enterprise Journal (SEJ)Journal of Social Entrepreneurship ( JSE)
Search limitation BSC, SD, and ISI¼ only academic journals
Table II.Characteristics ofbibliometric study
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4. Analysis and results4.1 Bibliometric characteristics of SE and SEship literatureThe bibliometric analysis started by describing the 286 records dataset characteristicsand related implications. Three datasets were conformed: SE, SEship, SEneur, and thecombined dataset. The SE dataset contains 145 records, the SEship 94 records, theSEneur 39 records, and the combined contains eight records. A relational graphpresenting the evolution of publications per dataset is presented in Figure 1.
From 1991 to 2004, the annual output of SE, SEship, and SEship research was at avery low level. The publication productivity per annum steadily increased between2005 and 2009 and accelerated in 2010. Regarding the growth rates, 2005 presented thehigh value of 425 per cent. Similarly, the later years presented a gradual average yearlyincrement of 12 articles with an existing ascendant trend expected to continue in thenear future. In general, a majority of records (83 per cent) were published within thelast five years, giving credence to the notion that SE is an emerging field of interest.Regarding the evolution of the three datasets separately, a similar pattern wasidentified, suggesting that all three concepts are being used simultaneously onliterature.
In order to identify the individual contribution of each author, affiliation andcountry to the total SE and SEship literature, the whole counting model was employedin this analysis to assign equal credit to the articles with author, affiliation, or countryco-authorship. Therefore, total in Table III is different from the total number of articlesreviewed.
Over 464 different authors contributed to the 286 SE and SEship papers. However,among them, only 54 (12 per cent) had written two or more papers since 1991, and themost prolific contributor was Paul Tracey who produced seven articles, followed byHelen Haugh with five (Table III). The authorship position pattern suggested that afew productive SE authors were the first authors of all their publications and someothers never played a leading role in their studies. This performance might indicatethat an important number of new researchers and practitioners have been taking partin this new academic field.
Continuing with the authorship patterns, it was found that of the total 286 articles,168 (59 per cent) were joint-authored; with two-person authorship (35 per cent) beingthe dominant pattern. On the other hand, publications with single author represented
SE
SEneur
SEship
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1991
|19
92|
1993
|19
94|
1995
|19
96|
1997
|19
98|
1999
|20
00|
2001
|20
02|
2003
|20
04|
2005
|20
06|
2007
|20
08|
2009
|20
10|
Combine
Total
Figure 1.Distribution of
publications per dataset
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41 per cent (118) of the total of records. Translating these patterns to numbers, theaverage number of authors per article has increased to almost two since 2007.
There were 264 affiliations responsible for the 286 articles. For these affiliations,73 (27 per cent) produced 199 (51 per cent) publications (Table III). As is happeningin other disciplines, the institutions responsible for the majority of publications inSE and SEship are o30 per cent of the total (Gu, 2004; De Bakker et al., 2005).These were all universities, with the most prolific contributors coming from UKuniversities. The proportion of authors coming from institutions outside the academiccontext was small but significant. A total of 55 (14 per cent) affiliations were, forexample, SE, institutions supporting SE, or independent consultants. Furthermore,the number of papers developed in collaboration work between academics andpractitioners was 19 (7 per cent) with a notable upward trend. Only UK was involvedin international co-collaboration between UK universities and South African,Nigerian, and Polish institutions (Nwankwo et al., 2007; Van Rensburg et al., 2008;Curtis et al., 2010).
By analysing country productivity, 35 individual countries were identified(Figure 2). Of them, 61 per cent is represented by just two countries, UK and theUSA, with the former being the most productive source of literature from bothacademic and practitioner sources; contrasting the statement by Haugh (2005) thatsuggested the opposite situation. The top seven countries were developed countriesrepresenting 82 per cent of the total publications. The contribution of papers from
No. ofAuthorship position
patternAuthors Affiliation articles 1 2 3 4
Tracey, Paul University of Cambridge 7 3 2 2Haugh, Helen University of Cambridge 5 2 1 2Smith, Brett R. Miami University 4 3 1Thompson, John L. University of Huddersfield 4 4Defourny, Jacques University of Liege 4 3 1Bull, Mike Manchester Metropolitan University 4 4Phillips, Nelson University London Imperial College 4 4Woods, Christine University of Auckland 4 3 1Seanor, Pam University of Huddersfield 3 2 1Brown, Judith University of Teesside 3 1 1 1Nyssens, Marthe Catholic University of Louvain 3 3Nicholls, Alex Oxford University 3 3Mort, Gillian Sullivan La Trobe University 3 1 1 1Weerawardena, Jay University of Queensland 3 2 1Bloom, Paul N. Duke University 3 3Munoz, Sarah-Anne University of the Highlands and Islands 3 3Spear, Roger Open University 3 3Tapsell, Paul University of Otago 3 2 1Two publications(36 authors)
Two publications (50 affiliations) 100
One publication(410 authors)
One publication (191 affiliations) 191
Grand total 357
Table III.Research production byindividual authors andaffiliation
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developing countries was relatively smaller and only 10 per cent came from Asia,Africa, and South America. These results confirmed what Frame (1979) demonstratedempirically in 1979. His affirmation was that country research outputs were differentfor developed and underdeveloped countries, the former being higher because of theiraccess to physical, monetary, and manpower resources.
Nevertheless, the appearance of more international collaboration publicationsbetween developed and developing countries suggested that this pattern is slightlychanging. According to Frame and Carpenter (1979) and Glanzel et al. (1999),underdeveloped and small countries have heavy engagement in internationalcollaboration because they have practically no other choice than to find acollaborating partner from outside their borders. Based on the patterns ofmultinational collaboration identified in this study, Figure 3 confirms this statement
Belgium
Poland
Korea
UK
South africa
Nigeria
Malaysia
Iran
China
India
AustraliaItaly
Uruguay
Colombia
Canada USA Philippines
New zealand
Finland
Figure 3.Patterns of multinational
collaboration
UK1%
1%
1%4%
2%2%
2%2%
3%
4%
5%
7%
5%
33%
28%
USACanadaAustraliaItalyNew zealandBelgiumIndiaSpainThe NetherlandsChinaIrelandIsraelTwo publications (Seven countries)One publication (15 countries)
Figure 2.Distribution of papers
by country
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showing that ten of 19 countries involved in international collaboration weredeveloping countries.
The multinational collaboration on SE and SEship literature is not significant forthe majority of contributors (6 per cent). However, the growing trend presented in thenumber of multinational publications, where eight of 19 were published in 2010,indicates that more academics and practitioners are joining efforts to conductinternational research. This phenomenon coincides with the results obtained on joint-author patterns, confirming that the SE sector is becoming more specialized as aresponse to the professionalism of the sector (Frame and Carpenter, 1979).
Overall, it was observed that, in terms of number of publications, the top five mostproductive countries, institutions, and individuals generated 76, 8, and 4 per cent of theentire SE research output, respectively. This demonstrates that there are countriesdominating the SE research area, like UK and the USA, whereas institutional andindividual research output is spread more equally, which coincided with theHill et al. (2010) results, who concluded that no author or institution dominated the SEliterature.
The sources of SE and SEship publications were diverse with a total of 148 differentjournals identified. Not surprisingly, the specialist journals, Social Enterprise Journaland Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, have published the larger number ofpublications (Table IV). However, the former was recognized only by The Associationof Business Schools (ABS) with one grade, and the latter was not even included inthe rankings due to their early stages. From the most representative journalsthat contain 59 per cent of the SE publications, only 11 were included on the ISIdatabase and for that reason, have an impact factor. The Journal of World Businesshas the highest impact factor (2.6) and accounts for six articles. Similar resultsappeared when evaluating the Academic Journal Quality classification providedby ABS. From the top 17 journals only one journal, Entrepreneurship Theory andPractice, was classified as a top journal in the field with nine publications, followedby four journals classified with three grades, one with two grades and seven withone grade.
An important aspect when interpreting publication sources behaviour is theanalysis of the areas of publication output. This information can be retrieved directlyfor the databases, however, only ISI Web of Knowledge records included the journalsubject categories, or discipline. In order to obtain a homogeneous categorization ofjournals, categories have been assigned to the other 181 records employing thedescription of each of the categories obtained from the Scope Notes 2010 Social ScienceCitation Index from Journal Citation Reports. The most common disciplinescontributing to the SE and SEship literature were Management and Business,representing 53 per cent of the total articles. These concur with the Short et al. (2009)and Douglas (2008) findings, where business, management, and entrepreneurshipjournals represent the majority of disciplines studying SE. The other schools ofthought that have been studied SE and SEship from their points of view were:economics (8 per cent), education (5 per cent), public administration (4.5 per cent), socialsciences (4.5 per cent), and planning and development (4 per cent).
4.2 Epistemological orientation of SE and SEship literatureA second stage in the bibliometric analysis was the categorization of papers accordingto their epistemological orientation. Identifying how a SE community conductsresearch can be used to measure the maturity of that community.
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To determine a clear and concise framework for classifying the papers according totheir epistemological orientation, different approaches developed by literature reviewworks on SE, knowledge management, and bibliometric analysis were studied. Forinstance, Barley et al. (1988) typified papers according to what they communicated:theory and research, practical managerial advice, or general descriptive information.This approach was followed by De Bakker et al. (2005) who studied Corporate SocialResponsibility literature and defined a sub-category for Barley’s proposal. Theyclassified papers as: theoretical, prescriptive, and descriptive. For the purpose of thisresearch, De Bakker’s framework was employed because it follows a more positivistformat, which allows the researcher to define with more detail the real purpose of eachpaper.
Journals Subject category TotalFrequency
(%)Impactfactors ABS
Social Enterprise Journal Management 59 21 No 1Journal of Social Entrepreneurship Business;
management 9 3 No NoEntrepreneurship Theory andPractice
Business9 3 1.7 4
Entrepreneurship and RegionalDevelopment
Business; planningand development 7 2 1.02 3
International Journal of SocialEconomics
Economics7 2 No 1
Journal of Business Ethics Business; ethics 7 2 1.08 3Journal of Non-Profit and PublicSector Marketing
Business6 2 No 1
Journal of World Business Business 6 2 2.6 3Emergence: Complexity andOrganization
Education andeducational research 6 2 No 1
Journal of DevelopmentalEntrepreneurship
Business5 2 No No
Non-profit Management andLeadership
Social sciences,interdisciplinary;business 4 1 No 1
International Journal of PublicAdministration
Publicadministration 4 1 No No
Business Horizons Economics;management 3 1 No 1
Annals of Public and CooperativeEconomics
Economics; publicadministration 3 1 No 2
California Management Review Business;management 3 1 1.98 3
International Journal of Non-profitand Voluntary Sector Marketing
Business3 1 No 1
Journal of Asia-Pacific Business Economics;management 3 1 No No
Two publications (11 journals) 22 8One publication (120 journals) 120 42Grand total 286 100
Table IV.Publication sources
of SE and SEship
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The typology presented in Table V was employed in this study and has thefollowing assumptions (De Bakker et al., 2005):
(1) theoretical papers propose, develop, or expand the conception of a topic and donot need to involve necessarily the collection of new empirical data;
(2) conceptual papers do not depend on empirical data, but predictive andexplorative papers do;
(3) predictive papers include hypothesis test, but exploratory present expectationabout variables relation;
(4) prescriptive papers offer methods or advice to practitioners and professionalsfor addressing pragmatic problems, which could be instrumental or normative;and
(5) descriptive papers intend to report facts or opinion, without a noticeablecontribution to either theory or practice.
As a sub-category, the research strategy followed by each paper was analysed lookingfor the strategy of inquiry, data collection, and data analysis method (Creswell, 2009;Teddlie and Tashakkori, 2009). Additionally, the presence of formal hypotheses orpropositions was evaluated. A further step was analysing all the abstracts, titles, andkeywords in the dataset to establish their epistemological orientation using thetypology presented in Table V. The use of an article’s full text was only performed toanalyse those cases where the research method was not specified or where there weredoubts about the classification.
The first classification of papers according to their epistemological orientationand purpose appeared to be largely of a theoretical (71 per cent) and descriptive(20 per cent) nature (Table VI). Half of the theoretical papers were of an exploratory
TheoreticalConceptual Major focus is on developing propositions, hypotheses, or (cor-) relations between
theoretical constructs, based on a discussion of state-of-the-art literature; no newempirical material has been collected for this work
Exploratory Major focus is on developing propositions, hypotheses, and (cor-) relationsbetween theoretical constructs, based on the examination of extensive, newempirical data
Predictive Major focus is on testing of propositions, hypotheses, or (cor-) relations betweentheoretical constructs, based on the examination of extensive, new empirical data
PrescriptiveInstrumental Major focus is on providing recommendations, such as, means, ideas, and recipes
for action, to practitioners and professionals, which are instrumental in therealization of some desired end, such as improved performance along somedimension
Normative Major focus is on providing recommendations to practitioners and professionals,which are valuable in themselves when considered from some ethical, moral, orreligious point of view
DescriptiveDescriptive Major focus is on reporting fact or opinion; no intention of a theoretical or
prescriptive contribution
Source: Originated by the author based on De Bakker et al. (2005)
Table V.Epistemologicalclassification of papers
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nature (52 per cent), followed by conceptual papers with a significant 42 per cent, andonly 6 per cent with a predictive orientation. A o10 per cent of the papers have aprescriptive nature, with instrumental being the dominant pattern with 20 papers.
These findings are comparable to the ones found by Short et al. (2009) andHoogendoorn et al. (2010), where o50 per cent of their articles were empirical.Additionally, the proportion of conceptual and case-based papers concurred with theHill et al. (2010) findings, representing an 88 per cent of the total 286 articles.
The second classification of papers examined research strategies adopted byempirical papers, which included 117 theoretical exploratory and predictive papers(Table VII). An evident focus on qualitative research was presented (82 per cent) withcase studies identified as the most common methodology used by SE researchers. Thenumber of papers left was almost equally proportioned between mixed andquantitative methods, with 9 and 8 per cent, respectively.
Contrasting these findings with the ones obtained by Douglas (2008), acontradictory pattern of SE literature was identified. Among her 20 papers, shedistinguished an equivalent proportion of papers using case study, survey, andnetwork analysis methods, what contrasted with the majority of papers analysed inthis study that used case study methodology. Additionally, she suggested a trend in SE
Category Subcategory No. of articles Frequency (per cent)
Descriptive Descriptive total 56 20Prescriptive Instrumental 20 71
Normative 8 29Prescriptive total 28 9
Theoretical Conceptual 85 42Exploratory 105 52Predictive 12 6Theoretical total 202 71
Grand total 286 100
Table VI.Epistemological
classification
Research methods/strategy Research methodology No. of articles Frequency (per cent)
Mixed methods Sequential 6 55Concurrent 5 45Mixed methods total 11 9.4
Qualitative Case study 78 82Grounded theory 6 6Action research 6 6Phenomenal 3 3Narrative research 2 2Mixed methodology 1 1Qualitative total 96 82.1
Quantitative Survey research 9 90Experimental 1 10Quantitative total 10 8.5
Grand total 117 100Table VII.
Research strategy
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literature towards using computational methods, what was not identified in thisresearch.
On the other hand, there were more similarities between the patterns obtained bythis research and the ones identified by Hoogendoorn et al. (2010) and Short et al.(2009), who found more than 70 per cent of their empirical papers following aqualitative approach with case studies being the most used method.
SE research also tends to be a mono-method, relying on either qualitative orquantitative. Only 11 studies integrated qualitative and quantitative approaches(Hibbert et al., 2002; Turner and Martin, 2005; Korosec and Berman, 2006; Wong andTang, 2006; Ferguson and Xie, 2008; Basargekar, 2009; Curry et al., 2009; Bridgstocket al., 2010; Fluix et al., 2010). Even then, they applied just a simple two-step approach,for example, interviews followed by a survey, or vice versa.
Regarding data collection methods used by SE researchers, the leading techniqueidentified was interviews, with more than a third (38 per cent) of the total (Figure 4).The other specific techniques with 10 per cent or more were survey questionnairesand archival data. The use of observation, focus groups, secondary data, andworkshops all scored between 4 and 8 per cent. Researchers using more than onetechnique for data collection represented half of the 87 papers with an identifiablemethodology.
For data analysis methods (Figure 4), almost half of the empirical paperspresented their results, discussion, and conclusion without specifying which methodthey used to obtain those findings. Among the papers that specified their dataanalysis method, qualitative employed mostly thematic analysis whereas quantitativeused more matrices and inferential statistics. The use of formal hypothesesand propositions was limited to only 13 papers, confirming the Short et al. (2009)results.
Data collection Data analysis
45%
15%
8%
7%
6%
5%4%2%2%6%
38%
11%
Interview
Archival data
Focus groups
Workshop
Not mentioned Not mentioned
Others
Secondary data
Observation
Questionaire Thematic analysis
Descriptive statistics
Cross-case analysis
Matrices
Others
Triangulation
Content analysis
Inferential statistics
Coding system
10%
8%
7%
4%2%3%
17%
Figure 4.Data collection andanalysis methods
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5. DiscussionThis paper presents results from a bibliometric analysis of SE and SEship literaturefrom 1991 to 2010, offering a first attempt to identify the intellectual structure ofboth fields.
Following the analysis of bibliometric characteristics of SE and SEship literature,an existing ascendant trend was confirmed on SE and SEship publications, with aremarkable increase within the last five years. This behaviour indicates how SE andSEship are becoming emerging fields of interest for both academics and practitioners.Additionally, a similar pattern was identified among the three datasets, SE, SEship,and SEneur, evidencing that the concepts had not had different evolutions and could befound as synonymous in the literature.
In relation to authorship patterns in SE and SEship literature, a significanttendency towards greater co-authorship suggested the expanded co-operation betweenresearchers and research groups in SE field. This could indicate a growth ofspecialization, where academics and practitioners collaborated with others preciselybecause those others brought to the combined research different talents and skills,without which the project would be impossible (Rennie, 2001). Similar patterns wererecognized in the analysis of authors’ affiliations. The appearance of publications withacademics and practitioners as joint authors, implied the awareness and intentions ofdeveloping theory that has a valuable input to the actual sector, understanding howthis research will be enriched by moving from a more conceptual to a more empiricalresearch exercise.
This study also shows the geographical spread of SE and SEship literature, and theinternationalization of the research. The existence of two groups, a European groupwith the UK as leader, and an Americas group with the USA as leader, is evident. Thisconfirms what is covered in SE and SEship literature, where two different approacheshave been defined for SE study (Defourny and Nyssens, 2006; Kerlin, 2006; Dees, 2007;Hoogendoorn et al., 2010). However, the pattern followed by multinational authoredpublications (Figure 3) presented an initial intention of bringing these two differentapproaches together, overcoming the conceptual barriers that have been identified onSE and SEship literature (Alter, 2003; Dart, 2004; Haugh, 2005; Defourny and Nyssens,2006; Hockerts, 2006; Spear, 2006; Jones, 2007; Peattie and Morley, 2008; Mair andMarti, 2009; Robinson et al., 2009; Teasdale, 2010). This represents a step forward tointernational collaboration with more emphasis on empirical research, analysing issuessuch as, community participation (Farmer and Kilpatrick, 2009), sustainability(Weerawardena et al., 2010), and organizational behaviour (Smith et al., 2010).
Despite these patterns, it is vital to recognize that there is still a long journeyto go on internationalization of SE research. For instance, two groups were identifiedin Figure 3 that do not follow the main literature streams. These are Asian countriesthat emphasize their SE research by presenting their experiences on communityenterprise and social businesses, rather than focusing their contributions on moreconceptual and definitional issues (Velamuri and Shanmugam, 2008; Salarzahi et al.,2010).
These results support the statement presented by Kerlin (2009), who identified thatpart of the current difficulties in defining SE is the different geographical associationsof the term “Social Enterprise”. Different areas of the world have interpreted the termaccording to their distinct models and activities, making cross-regional discussiondifficult. Furthermore, this regional development has meant that innovative ideasdeveloped in one area are rarely known in other regions.
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Another bibliometric indicator analysed was the publications’ sources. For SE andSEship literature, the most productive journals were found in the business andmanagement categories. The study of SE under a business lens demonstrated howacademics and practitioners are adding more effort to investigate the enterprise sideof SE, and leaving the social aspect to be studied to a minor degree by other schools.This concurred with Cook et al. (2003), who distinguished that SEship literature hasless emphasis on the social and more on the entrepreneurial activities and abilities ofindividuals. Other disciplines, such as, economics, education, and social science,although they have a close relationship with management and business categories,presented papers with the evident intention of exploring the other side of SE, that is itssocial implication. As Mair and Martı (2006) suggested, the study and understanding ofSEship cannot be developed only with an economic sense. SEship needs to be observedin the light of the social context and the local environment.
For instance, economic publications were more related to measuring SE impactfactors (Bitange Ndemo, 2006; Darby and Jenkins, 2006; Thompson and Doherty, 2006),education journals presented works on implementing complexity theory on SE(Goldstein et al., 2008; Massetti, 2008; Rhodes and Donnelly-Cox, 2008; Tapsell andWoods, 2008), public administration publications were more interested on thegovernance of SE (Ruys et al., 2007; Spear et al., 2009), social science papers discussedgeneral aspects of SE definition (Alvord et al., 2004; Mendell, 2010), and planning anddevelopment journals presented specific examples regarding stakeholders intervention(Zografos, 2007; Heeks and Arun, 2010).
This analysis also identified the epistemological orientation of SE and SEshippublications and their research strategy, suggesting the maturity of the field. Thepresence of 450 per cent of the papers focusing only on conceptual issues mightsuggest that there is still a long way to go for SE academics and practitioners toachieve maturity in their research. Although the epistemological orientation patternhas seen changes in the last few years, with more empirical papers appearing since2004, once the boundaries of SE definition become clearer the focus of its studiesshould include more empirical research that will allow testing and validating thetheory. Together, theory development followed by empirical testing and validation willgenerate an increase in consensus on the boundaries of the field and its relevance,resulting in an increment on the visibility of SE research in key journals (Busenitz et al.,2003).
By analysing the research strategy employed by SE researchers, similar conclusionswere obtained on how academics and practitioners are building and testing theory.On one hand, qualitative research is used to build theory whereas quantitative researchis used to validate it. With more than 80 per cent of the empirical papers employingqualitative methodologies, focusing on case studies, grounded theory, and actionresearch, it might be suggested that SE community is in a theory building stage.Quantitative research will become more prevalent as the SE community moves fromtheory building to theory validation.
Nonetheless, it was not surprising that SE literature presented more qualitativeresearch, which has been recognized to be useful for exploring new topics andidentifying the social norms of a society (Hennink et al., 2011). Likewise, qualitativeresearch has the advantage of allowing the construction of knowledge and theoriesfacilitating the researcher to adapt to changing conditions. As was identified in asocietal change literature analysis by Douglas (2008), the high use of qualitativeresearch methods also points to a visible pattern of including the voices of social
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entrepreneurs. Obtaining information and building research based on SEneurexperiences will reduce ambiguity, conceptual inconsistency, and uncertainty in thedata.
The extensive number of papers based on case studies also implied that SEresearchers are more interested in studying SEs in their natural setting, generatingtheories from practice, and investigating new perspectives. This research method suitsSE research performance given the lack of common terminology and models, and willhelp to generate the accurate formulated theories necessary to advance the field(Benbasat et al., 1987). Corresponding to Hoogendoorn et al. (2010) findings, it wassurprising that this study only identified six papers using grounded theory, whereas ahigher number would have been expected in this relatively new field. Incorporatingthis research methodology in SE research might help in showing to academics andpractitioners the legitimacy of SE, and capturing the complexity of SE context(Locke, 2001).
Drawing upon these findings, it is possible to conclude that SE, as a scientificdiscipline, is maturing. As Serenko et al. (2010) defined, there are three indicators ofthis maturity process: changes in co-authorship patterns, inquiry methods, and rolesof practitioners. Regarding co-authorship patterns, the average number of authorsper article in SE papers has been increasing since 2007 to a general average of 1.9,indicating maturity because, as Lipetz (1999) demonstrated, there is a positiverelationship between the average number of authors per paper and the field’s maturity.This might indicate that multiple researchers are taking part in each work in order toimprove the quality, increase the level of specialization, and then increase the chancesof future acceptance of publications. With respect to inquiry methods, SE literaturepresents almost half of the total number of papers of a descriptive and conceptualnature without any empirical support. This denotes a lower level of maturity of SEdiscipline, since there are still greater efforts on the theoretical foundation of the field.However, a significant trend towards more empirical research was identified, with anaverage of a 30 per cent increase in the number of empirical papers appearing per yearin the last five years. This demonstrates that, gradually, SE researchers are testingempirically the theoretical principles of the field. In terms of the role of practitioners,the number of SE researchers coming from academia has been increasingproportionate to the number of SE publications. On the other hand, the participationof authors coming from non-academic institutions has tended slightly to decrease.Literature suggests that this phenomenon represents maturity of a specific field, sincemost of its works are currently written by academic researchers. Regarding thisstatement, this study suggest that a participation of practitioners in SE literature isstill required as Roberts and Woods (2005, p. 45) affirmed:
The challenge for academia is to turn an inherently practitioner-led pursuit into a morerigorous and objective discipline. The challenge for practitioners is to raise more awareness,support and participation.
6. ConclusionsThe analysis in this paper presents a deeper understanding of the intellectual structureof SE and SEship as disciplines, by interpreting their bibliometric characteristics, anddetermining the current maturity of the fields based on their epistemologicalorientation. It is concluded that SE and SEship as disciplines are maturing, with theorydevelopment followed by empirical testing and validation generating an increase inconsensus on the boundaries of the field.
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Considering the maturity of SE and SEship fields in terms of research strategies,this study suggests that the use of more sophisticated analysis approaches, hypothesistesting, proposition generation, and a stronger and more adaptable research design,would allow SE researchers to analyse their research problems more appropriately.By employing more innovative methods, such as network analysis and action research,it will allow researchers to capture the complex processes being studied. Suchmethodologies will also offer a stronger research design.
Although important advances had been identified in this study, to define conceptualboundaries for the SE field, this paper suggests that it is important to develop acommonly understood SE vocabulary that allows comparison among studies.Furthermore, researchers need to increase multinational collaboration andmultidisciplinary research in order to integrate the bases of SE theory from bothbusiness and social context.
Further research on analysing SE and SEship literature would evaluate with moredetail each SE production in order to identify theoretical approaches, such as,principles, indices, models, frameworks, and tools. These approaches would be thefoundation for future empirical research and theory validation.
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Corresponding authorMaria L. Granados can be contacted at: [email protected]
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