Social Entrepreneurship, one of the branches of Entrepreneurship, has acquired important relevance because it has both social and financial purposes and has become a necessary mechanism to combat social exclusion, revitalize disadvantaged areas, provide employment opportunities, and address social problems neglected by the public and private sectors. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the subject among academics and entrepreneurs, but there is still research that lacks an adequate conceptualization. Therefore, this article aims to identify the main lines of research on social entrepreneurship through a bibliometric analysis. To carry out the analysis, a study of both publication performance and word co-occurrence of 3023 articles extracted from Web of Science during the period 1993–2022 was performed using the SCIMAT v1.1.04 software for data processing. It was found that the year 2022 was the year with the highest scientific production, and a strong relationship was established between social entrepreneurship and gender and economic development issues. As a result of the analysis, possible lines of future research are proposed, and these can contribute to fill the existing knowledge gaps on social entrepreneurship and promote a better understanding of the topic.

Microfinance has become one of the most important financing alternatives for business start-ups, especially for vulnerable groups in poor regions. Microfinance provides access to financial products, especially to people who have been excluded from the traditional financial system. However, the mainstream literature on microfinance shows its impact on poverty alleviation, but it is not yet well developed to understand its dynamizing role in the entrepreneurial sector. There is still a large gap in the literature on analyzing microfinance as a financing alternative, so this paper seeks to find this relationship in the literature. A bibliometric analysis is applied, both of the performance of the publications and a word co-occurrence analysis during the period 2017–2022. The articles indexed in the Web of Science have been considered and systematized through the SCIMAT software v1.1.04, developed by the Soft Computing and Intelligent Information Systems Research Group, University of Granada, Granada, Spain. Microfinance institutions, education, entrepreneurship, organizational performance, business microcredits, and women microentrepreneurs have been identified as driving themes to be considered in future analyses. At the end of the document, the proposed future lines of research are presented. In addition, the results show the growing interest of the academic community in the topic, with 2022 being the year with the highest number of articles published on the topic.

Social entrepreneurship is a topic of great development at the research level, which aims to discover, exploit and define the possibilities of increasing social wealth through activities and processes carried out with the creation and management of an innovative enterprise. From this, it has been identified that one of the main problems of social entrepreneurs in underdeveloped countries is the lack of financing, where new forms of financing have not been consolidated, as is the case with impact investment. Therefore, the objective of this research is to determine the role of impact investment in each of the Ecuadorian social enterprises under study. To this end, a qualitative research methodology of an interpretive nature was adopted through in-depth interviews with social entrepreneurs for the construction of results by means of summary tables and descriptive and graphic taxonomy. The results show that for most of the social enterprises studied, the role of impact investment is null, without this implying a lack of knowledge on the part of the social enterprises. Finally, it is necessary that policymakers take into account the need to promote sustainable development by improving social inclusion to support projects and enterprises that generate employment and opportunities for marginalized and vulnerable groups, promoting policies and measures that encourage this type of investment to generate a positive impact on the country.

One of the main limitations of entrepreneurship is access to finance, especially in the early stages. Over the years, new sources of finance have evolved to respond to this need and provide new options for entrepreneurs. Using a bibliometric analysis, this paper examines the evolution of the academic literature and analyses the relationship between entrepreneurship and alternative financing over three periods of time (1975-1999, 2000-2010, and 2011-2020). This work aims to provide a clearer view of the evolution of this relationship and identifies current trends and future lines of research. The data were obtained from the Web of Science (WOS) database and systematized using SciMAT software. Results show that venture capital and business angels have become the main financing sources for entrepreneurs, being the most studied from different approaches, especially since 2000. Incubators in universities and research centers, corporate governance, and development of this type of financing in emerging countries are emerging as potential areas for further research in this field.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the world economy, affecting the financial performance of companies, Ecuador has been no exception. This study aims to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on the financial performance (profitability, earnings and sales) of large Ecuadorian private companies using data from the balance sheets and income statements of the hundred largest companies in Ecuador in the period 2015-2020, by applying the quasi-experimental differences-in-differences methodology. The results reveal that the pandemic has had a negative impact on companies' profitability and sales, however, in some cases, net income has an inverse behavior. These findings have important implications for business management strategies and the future of the Ecuadorian market.