Defining Social Enterprise across Different Contexts: A Conceptual Framework Based on Institutional Factors

Over the past several decades the concept of social enterprise has grown dramatically in many regions of the world. Defined as the use of nongovernmental, market-based approaches to address social issues, social enterprise often provides a ‘business’ source of revenue for many types of socially oriented organizations and activities.1 However, within these broad parameters, world regions have come to identify different definitions and concepts with the social enterprise movement in their areas (Kerlin, 2006). This variation has also resulted in considerable debate among researchers and practitioners on how to define the concept (Mair et al., 2006; Light, 2008). To address these difficulties, this research draws on the theory of historical institutionalism to advance understanding of how context influences the development of social enterprise as well as to propose a preliminary conceptual framework for social enterprise that spans regional differences in the term.