Analyzing the evolution of research on social entrepreneurship pre and post Covid-19 crisis

Abstract

The pandemic context has impacted the practice of social entrepreneurship all around the world, creating a new worldwide dynamic.  In order to consider the Covid-19 crisis effect on the academic sphere, we analyzed pre and post covid scientific production to outline the evolution of research in the field of social entrepreneurship since its beginnings to nowadays.

To do so, this paper conducted a scoping review analysis based on several articles dealing with social entrepreneurship, regarding the main topic clusters discussed by scholars and their adopted methodologies pre and post Covid-19 crisis.

We argue that the advent of the covid-19 crisis has not significantly changed methodological  orientation in social entrepreneurship research, but has instead shifted the focus of academics and practitioners to aspects more related to (1) the agility in the co-creation of solutions and impact in extremely disadvantaged circumstances which reinforce resilience abilities of actors, (2) the importance of social and human capital, and (3) the pressing need to think locally in order to value the knowledge, assets and practices related to each specific context, and even to each community.

Keywords : Covid-19 crisis, Research evolution, Social entrepreneurship.

Paper Type: Theoretical Research

JEL Classification : L31