Social Enterprise Recommendations Overview

Future research may benefit by going beyond asking how social entrepreneurs combine rules and features of traditional organizational forms to create a social enterprise and instead ask whether the degree or proportion of rules and features imported from each organizational source of inspiration if blended differently, might result in substantially different outcomes.

Government promotional efforts, in the form of financial or public policy efforts, can support the development of formal networks and a more solid business support system. They are trying to develop networks to support the growth of SEs with the creation of intermediate agencies, such as, national and regional networks (Ridley-Duff and Bull, 2011). But more support needs to be provided since these networks can facilitate collaboration, which is a key element in the sustainability of SEs.

To enable the development of a more active knowledge-sharing community of practice through SENs, a technological and cultural change must take place taking into consideration the structure, content, and interaction dimensions of the network. First, SENs need to change their approach from a distributive, one-way system, to a collaborative, two-way system, to affect the way users relate to the network and how the content is generated. Secondly, the technological side of that change implies the implementation of a new type of online platform, which would facilitate that collaborative nature of the exchange. Most significantly, it is the change in the way users will relate to each other in this new scenario that has the power to determine the success or failure of this new approach, providing further opportunities for collaboration and co-production. Thirdly, for a successful outcome, more peer-to-peer activities should be promoted to develop confidence and increase the trust between SENs’ members. Eventually, this will be the only way to foster adequate sociocultural factors that will make possible the creation of a cross-sector knowledge-sharing platform for the SE Sector.

The implications of the findings and the limitations of the study mean that further case-based studies are now required to discover might cause improved tacit knowledge sharing within the SEN and SEs, as well as the role of SEN in encouraging and facilitative collaboration among SEs. Studies across Europe and the US would also add to these findings.

Future research should consider the ways in which the motivations, interests, desired outcomes, and characteristics of investors can be reoriented to match the motivations, outcomes, and characteristics of this pool of investible enterprises. Future research should consider the ways in which the motivations, interests, desired outcomes, and characteristics of investors can be reoriented to match the motivations, outcomes, and characteristics of this pool of investible enterprises.

1) Future research is needed in economically less-developed countries and countries
known for the ‘base of the pyramid (BOP)’.
2) Researchers should move towards more explanatory research using larger national/cross-national datasets. Second, our measure facilitates future research examining the constructs that mediate the relationship between SEO and social innovation, such as resources and capabilities that will facilitate social innovation.
3) Future studies should replicate our model across domains in which SPOs are currently active such as the public sector, social enterprises, social businesses, and public-private partnerships that address social problems will serve to advance the field.

Future research should:
1) consider multiple facets of empathy other than the affective one (i.e., cognitive), and mechanisms other than agency (i.e., communion), in addressing the important question of how empathic individuals form intentions to engage in social entrepreneurship.
2) explore different settings in which individuals get to interact with and feel valued by potential beneficiaries, not only in terms of the geographical setting but also in terms of the length of interaction with potential beneficiaries, as well as contrasting individual work to teamwork. An experimental design may suit that type of research objective.
3) elaborate on the development of SE intentions in light of recent work indicating a generational decline in empathy among North American university students.
4) extend this work to the field of social entrepreneurship by examining the role of SE self-efficacy in enabling social worth.
5) explore social worth as a fertile construct for the development of future metrics of non-economic outcomes and phenomena not easily monetized.
6) investigate the effect of negative emotions that emerge from responsivity to the negative experiences of others on SE intentions.
7) also look at the role of emotions, such as situational empathy, in predicting SE intentions. Does situational empathy vary after exposure to concepts, stories, and knowledge related to social entrepreneurship, thereby raising SE intentions? Is this effect contingent on the type of course—lecture vs. experiential—or on the context—on-campus vs. field-based?