From “Push Out” to “Pull In” together: An analysis of social entrepreneurship definitions in the academic field

Abstract

Definitions are important! They are composed of words that express what people think. Despite numerous efforts to bring about a clear and unbiased definition of social entrepreneurship, there is still confusion as how social entrepreneurship should be defined. The objective of this paper is not to state a novel definition, this means not to "push out", but rather to "pull in" together to better understand what the scholars are talking about through their own social entrepreneurship (SE) definitions. In doing so, we contribute to the literature by synthesizing and analysing the SE definitions to better understand the field. To do so, a combination of methods was used: systematic review to reach the articles proposing definitions and memetic analysis to understand the content of the definitions by analysing their memes. From the analysis, three main categories were considered: entity types, entrepreneurial opportunities and intentions/promises. Future research lines and implications are highlighted.

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