Patterns of Meaning in the Social Entrepreneurship Literature: A Research Platform

We offer an inductive meta-analysis of the social entrepreneurship literature. Methodologically, we illustrate the usefulness of network and semantic network analysis in identifying and interpreting the concepts that provide coherence to a largely conceptual and analytic scholarly literature, or indeed any set of texts. The result of this rigorous approach is an orderly mapping of a conceptual framework for understanding social entrepreneurship, including unifying themes, areas of contention and promising avenues for future research.