Development of social entrepreneurship initiatives: a theoretical framework

There is a wide global attention to social entrepreneurship. However the social entrepreneurship theory is still in the stage of conceptualization as different countries have different social entrepreneurship coverage specifics and attitudes to social entrepreneurship initiatives. This paper tries to complement the lack of research work relating the social entrepreneurship phenomenon by proposing a conceptual framework, which encompasses the social entrepreneurship initiatives development process, the contextual aspects and social value. The main results are grounded on the decomposition of social entrepreneurship process and development the social entrepreneurship initiatives conceptual framework. The theoretical research has revealed that circumstances and social-entrepreneurial context are the most important factors for all stages of social entrepreneurship initiatives process. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.