Purpose: Despite growing scholarly interest in social entrepreneurs and the social enterprises (SE) they create, few studies have examined the hybridity of SE including, surprisingly, whether they adopt an entrepreneurial orientation (EO). One explanation for this may be the continuing lack of an appropriate scale measuring social entrepreneurship orientation (SEO). The purpose of this paper is to address this research gap by proposing an initial SEO scale based on input from scholars in the fields of entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. Design/methodology/approach: This study employed mixed methods and a two stage design. In stage 1, a Delphi study with 18 researchers with expertise of investigating entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship was used to generate constructs combining aspects of both social and EOs. In stage 2, the authors assessed the face validity of the derived items from the Delphi study by conducting a survey with 82 such experts. Findings: This paper provides fresh empirical insights into how SEO can be measured by proposing, for the first time, a 12 item scale with four dimensions for the first time. Research limitations/implications: The authors recommend that future studies employ quantitative methods, particularly with firms exhibiting differing levels of the “socialness” dimension which the authors propose and that such studies involve a variety of research informants. Statistical analysis of data collected across large sample sizes will help evaluate the reliability and validity of the scale which the authors propose. Practical implications: This paper includes implications for future research based on the proposed SEO measurement scale. Originality/value: This paper develops the first SEO scale based on empirical data collected from experts in the fields of entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship.

Which factors facilitate the identification of business opportunities for sustainable development? To answer this question, we develop a process model of sustainable opportunity identification. We argue that sustainable opportunity identification is a process with transitions from problem to solution identification and from solution to sustainable opportunity identification. Moreover, the transitions are facilitated by two factors—awareness of adverse consequences and entrepreneurial attitude—providing motivation and direction in the process. We tested our model in a field study (N = 107) and two experiments (N = 53 andN = 69). Our findings show that awareness of adverse consequences and entrepreneurial attitude influence the process of sustainable opportunity identification, explaining under which conditions people are more likely to identify business opportunities for sustainable development. Our study thus contributes to the field of sustainable entrepreneurship.

Due to its growing practical relevance, sustainability entrepreneurship receives a high degree of academic attention. However, literature on how to educate sustainability entrepreneurs remains scarce. A promising didactical approach in this context is service learning. We ask if service learning is an effective way to educate sustainability entrepreneurs, and which framework conditions impact those educators. First, we draw on an established sustainable entrepreneurship capability framework and provide direct evidence from entrepreneurship educators about the effectiveness of service learning. Second, based on grounded theory, qualitative interviews with those educators reveal a framework composed of personal and institutional factors that they have to navigate when provide service learning. Our findings contribute to the interface of service learning and sustainability entrepreneurship by highlighting its effectiveness and the framework conditions for educators.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize business incubators and their support for entrepreneurial refugees. While the number of initiatives supporting refugees’ entrepreneurial activities has increased in recent years, we still know little about how they differ from other types of business incubators. Design/methodology/approach: This case study investigates a business incubator in Hamburg, Germany, targeting enterprising refugees. For this paper, 14 in-depth interviews with program participants and incubation managers were conducted. Findings: This paper inductively derives five functional domains of refugee business incubators: providing structured entrepreneurial knowledge; alleviating anxiety related to institutional differences; guiding through the process at the incubator and motivating participants; understanding and tapping into social capital in the host country; and providing soft support concerning personal matters. The findings show that business incubators could and possibly should address specific needs of refugees and that there is much room for improvement. This study suggests that the five domains listed above represent key characteristics that distinguish refugee business incubators from traditional business incubators. Practical implications: This paper offers valuable practical insights for refugee business incubators, which need to consider and develop functional domains listed above. Because these kinds of incubators are a fairly recent phenomenon, there is a general lack of and need for blueprints. The findings of this paper suggest that business incubators could integrate and support entrepreneurial refugees provided that they consider the five functional domains identified here. The findings also provide evidence that entrepreneurship can be a possible means of vocational integration for refugees and one way of institutions and policy-makers in host country seeking to support refugees’ entrepreneurial activities, for example, by developing or subsidizing business incubators targeting refugees. Originality/value: This paper’s contributions are twofold. First, this paper addresses a gap in the literature on refugee entrepreneurship by providing insights concerning the important role of support institutions. Second, this paper conceptualizes business incubators for enterprising refugees as a distinctive type of business incubators. This paper has, however, some limitations. Because it only considered a relatively small number of refugee entrepreneurs, it is difficult to generalize the findings. The cross-cultural setting of the empirical study, with its potential for linguistic and cultural misunderstandings, may have affected the results.

This study challenges the basic reasoning behind Lazear’s theory on entrepreneurship (2005). Based on the key motive of maximizing one’s lifetime income, Lazear posits that individuals with a balanced set of skills should have a higher probability of being self-employed. His “Jack-of-all-trades” hypothesis presumes that entrepreneurs need sufficient knowledge in a variety of areas to succeed, while paid employees benefit from being specialists in a certain area demanded by the labor market. Because most women-led businesses are neither based on the motive of making money nor are they growth oriented, we argue that maximizing their lifetime income is not the main motivation of many women to start a business. However, we argue that Lazear’s theory can be extended to motivations that are mostly stated for women entrepreneurs as well. We apply it to a specific representative sample of 1384 women graduates in Germany and test our hypothesis with logit regression. A dichotomized measure indicating whether a women graduate was self-employed (n = 706) or not (n = 678) served as the dependent variable. Our results widely confirm Lazear’s assumption for women graduates who run relatively small businesses in terms of sales and employment: professional training, balanced industry experience, and balanced entrepreneurship-based self-efficacy increase the probability of being self-employed. Solo self-employed tend to have balanced industry experience more often than those being in a team or having employees. Lazear’s theory has male as the norm, and as such, does not readily apply to the case of women—but could and should be extended to women’s specifics.

Despite the rapid growth of literature on social entrepreneurship and its increasing importance for social change and sustainability, little is known about how social entrepreneurship originates in different settings. In this study, we applied a gender-based perspective to analyse the origin and development of social entrepreneurship. Focusing on female social entrepreneurs in Namibia, we investigated how relationship networks sensitised women towards opportunities for social and sustainable innovations and who particularly influenced them during this process of idea generation and realisation. Using a mixed-method approach consisting of semi-structured interviews and egocentric network analysis, we identified an opportunity recognition process that differs from that of conventional ventures. Our results show that social innovation is not, e.g., due to gate-keepers but rather a result of everyday community interaction settings. This finding challenges current theories of (social) entrepreneurship, suggesting a need to further investigate the roles of gender and the socio-economic context.