Key Social Entrepreneurship Ecosystems and the Environmental

Problems They Are Solving: A Literature Review

Ivan Atanasov Bozhikin

Economics Department, University of National and World Economy, Student town, Sofia, Bulgaria

Keywords: Social Entrepreneurship, Ecosystems, Social Entrepreneurs, Environmental Problems.

Abstract: Social entrepreneurship is essential for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 and

solving many environmental and social problems in the community. Social entrepreneurs and their social

enterprises are key figures in social entrepreneurship. They interact with different social players to form

various types of social entrepreneurship ecosystems and thus address society's social problems on a larger

scale. However, there are limited studies on key social entrepreneurship ecosystems and their role in

overcoming the ecological problems of the community. Hence, the paper aims to analyze 36 critical peer-

reviewed articles that focus on various social entrepreneurship ecosystems and the vital environmental

problems they solved. The 36 articles have been studied from some critical aspects of social entrepreneurship

ecosystems, including i) patterns and groups of social entrepreneurship ecosystems, ii) factors for the

successful development of social entrepreneurship ecosystems, and iii) ecological problems solved by them.

The present study's findings can support future research in the growing research area of social

entrepreneurship ecosystems.

1 INTRODUCTION

Social entrepreneurship is vital for solving many

wicked societal problems, such as poverty,

unemployment, waste, water shortages,

environmental pollution, and climate change

(Bozhikin et al., 2019). Wicked problems are social

or cultural problems that are hard to be solved for

various reasons (Rittel and Webber, 1973). The two

leading social actors in social entrepreneurship are

social entrepreneurs and social enterprises. They

interact with different social players to form various

types of social entrepreneurship ecosystems and thus

address society's social and environmental problems

on a larger scale (Bozhikin et al., 2019). The scientific

literature on social entrepreneurship ecosystems has

grown significantly over the last decade. Various

social entrepreneurship ecosystems, like supportive

social entrepreneurship ecosystems (Islam, 2020) and

strengthening ecosystem/entrepreneurial ecosystems

(Spigel and Harrison, 2017), have been studied in the

literature. Other papers focus on country-specific

social entrepreneurship ecosystems in Mexico

(Villegas-Mateos and Vázquez-Maguirre, 2020),

https://orcid.org/ 0000-0001-8945-2465

India (Jain, Dhir and Khoa, 2020), Portugal (Thomaz

and Catalão-Lopes, 2019). However, to the best of the

author's knowledge, missing studies that focus on

current SE ecosystems, the factors for their

sustainable development, the main social players in

each of them, and the key environmental problems

overcome via them. Hence, this paper seeks to fulfill

this research gap partly.

In the present study, I analyzed in depth 36 critical

peer-review articles that studied various social

entrepreneurship ecosystems and the vital

environmental and social problems they solved.

These articles have been analyzed from some aspects

of social entrepreneurship ecosystems like i) patterns

and groups of social entrepreneurship ecosystems and

the most critical players in them, ii) factors for

successful development of social entrepreneurship

ecosystems, and iii) ecological problems solved by

them. The peer-review documents have been

searched in the Scopus database, one of the world's

most widely used research databases, containing a

wide range of peer-reviewed articles published in

medical, scientific, and social sciences journals,

including humanities. The Scopus database was

294

Bozhikin, I.

Key Social Entrepreneurship Ecosystems and the Environmental Problems They Are Solving: A Literature Review.

DOI: 10.5220/0012017100003536

In Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Water, Ecology and Environment (ISWEE 2022), pages 294-299

ISBN: 978-989-758-639-2; ISSN: 2975-9439

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

chosen for this study as “it is one of the largest

abstract and citation databases of publications (with

over 1.7 billion cited references), covering nearly

41,462 titles from approximately 11,678 publishers.

It covers over 76 million records with 3 million new

items added every year” (Toloo, Khodabandelou and

Oukil, 2020, p. 4). The method of how I found the

selected 36 peer-review articles in the Scopus

database is presented below.

2 METHOD

2.1 Procedure and Scale

I went through several steps or phases to reach the

final set of 36 articles (appendix, fig. 1). First, the

keywords based on which to search for articles related

to social entrepreneurship ecosystems have been

determined. The following keywords have been

chosen: social entrepreneurship, ecosystems, and

environmental problems. They are grouped into the

following two main combinations: 1) "social

entrepreneurship and ecosystems", and 2) ""social

entrepreneurship" and "environmental problems"".

The first combination of words guarantees to find

critical articles in the scientific literature related to

social entrepreneurship ecosystems and how these

ecosystems contribute to solving wicked problems.

The second combination aims to identify articles that

focus on environmental issues addressed by social

entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship

ecosystems. The two combinations mentioned above

are searched in the Scopus database. The scientific

articles on the set topic were explored in the specified

database from 1997 to 30th March 2022. This time

period has been selected because social

entrepreneurship has gained widespread usage after

1990, particularly in the past ten years (especially for

social entrepreneurship ecosystems) (Saebi, Foss, and

Linder, 2019).

2.2 Inclusion Criteria

The first combination of keywords ("social

entrepreneurship and ecosystems") was searched in

the Scopus database from 1997 to 30th March 2022.

The study included only peer-reviewed scientific

articles published in English and related partly or

wholely to social entrepreneurship ecosystems. The

second combination of keywords ("social

entrepreneurship" and "environmental problems")

have also been searched in the Scopus database in the

period from 1997 to 30th March 2022. The study

included only peer-reviewed articles published in

English in scientific journals or conference

proceedings that discussed environmental problems

addressed by social entrepreneurship and social

entrepreneurship ecosystems.

2.3 Exclusion Criteria

The first combination of keywords contributes to

finding various documents, e.g., articles, book

chapters, conference papers, books, reviews,

conference reviews, editorial, erratum, and notes.

Hence, I have first excluded documents written in a

language other than English. Then, I focused only on

peer-reviewed articles and excluded the rest of the

above-mentioned documents. The second

combination of keywords ("social entrepreneurship"

and "environmental problems") also contributes to

finding some documents, e.g., articles, conference

papers, books, etc. Due to the insufficient number of

documents about environmental problems solved by

social entrepreneurship ecosystems, I have selected

articles written in English and published in peer-

reviewed journals or conference proceedings. The

rest of the documents have been ignored because they

have been unrelated to the research field.

2.4 A Final List of Articles

When introducing the first combination of keywords

("social AND entrepreneurship AND ecosystems")

in the search engine of the Scopus database, 410

articles were found. The abstracts of each of these

articles were read. Many articles' abstracts mentioned

only one of the chosen three keywords. Other articles'

abstracts pointed out social entrepreneurship but did

not focus on social entrepreneurship ecosystems. A

few articles mentioned simultaneously in the abstract

the three keywords and focused on particular social

entrepreneurship ecosystems. Hence, only the articles

that partly or wholly studied social entrepreneurship

ecosystems were recognized and selected. Of the 410

papers, 28 were identified as suitable for the study

area based on the above criteria/factors. In the

introduction of the second combination of keywords

(" social entrepreneurship" AND “environmental

problems”) in the search engine of the Scopus

database, 29 documents were found. The abstracts of

each of these documents were read. After that, only

documents focused partly or wholly on the

environmental problems solved by social

entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship

ecosystems were chosen. Of the 29 documents, 8

articles were identified as suitable for the study area.

Key Social Entrepreneurship Ecosystems and the Environmental Problems They Are Solving: A Literature Review

295

As a result of both search combinations, the final list

of documents comprised 36 articles (appendix, table

1).

3 RESULTS, CONCLUSIONS,

AND LIMITATIONS

The final list of 36 articles has been analyzed from

four main perspectives.

First, I have identified 21 key social

entrepreneurship ecosystems mentioned in them.

Some of the discovered social entrepreneurship

ecosystems are related to particular sectors of the

economy (e.g., water sector (Biggs, Westley and

Carpenter, 2010), energy sector (Goyal, Sergi and

Kapoor, 2017), waste sectors (Mihaliková and

Lachytová, 2020)), while others are in the field of

innovation and new technologies. Several social

entrepreneurship ecosystems are created in

educational sectors to support the creation of new

social enterprises. The rest of the social

entrepreneurship ecosystems focus on particular

counties or aim to increase the social impact of social

enterprises and their ecosystems. What is more, the

discovered social entrepreneurship ecosystems are

classified into five patterns.

Second, the factors for successfully developing

identified social entrepreneurship ecosystems and

their key actors have been presented. In almost all

social entrepreneurship ecosystems, social

entrepreneurs and enterprises play a crucial role.

Third, I have discussed the role of government in

supporting social entrepreneurship ecosystems. There

are a bunch of regulatory mechanisms (e.g., subsidies

and grants, legislation, laws and decrees, in-kind

resources, taxes, public-private partnerships, public,

and voluntary programs, vouchers, websites, and

media campaigns) that the governments can use to

support the various social entrepreneurship

ecosystems (Bozhikin et al., 2019). One of the key

macroeconomic factors that can facilitate the creation

of new social entrepreneurship ecosystems (Kim,

2020, Starshinova and Chikova, 2021) and develop

the existing ones are public administration and

authorities. Furthermore, the government can support

the key players in each ecosystem via tax reduction,

subsidies, and various administrative relief (Bozhikin

et al., 2019).

Forth, ecological problems solved by identified

social entrepreneurship ecosystems have been

described. Social entrepreneurship ecosystems are

seen as an appropriate tool to address several

environmental issues, namely: i) water and water

shortages (Chandra, Man Lee and Tjiptono, 2021), ii)

ecosystem breakdown and environmental pollution

(Fhiri et al., 2021), iii) waste management and

harmful waste secretions (Mihaliková and Lachytová,

2020); iv) climate change (Groma and Licite-Kurbe,

2021). For example, social enterprises and social

entrepreneurship ecosystems can overcome some of

the water problems of society by 1) supplying clean

drinking water to people in remote regions of a

country, 2) providing water treatment technologies in

people's homes, and thus improving water quality.

(Chandra, Man Lee and Tjiptono, 2021, Duncan-

Horner, Farrelly and Rogers, 2022, Groma and Licite-

Kurbe, 2021, Letaifa, 2016). Social entrepreneurship

ecosystems can also solve particular waste and

ecological problems of the community (Licite,

Perkune and Auzina, 2020; Mihaliková and

Lachytová, 2020; Fhiri et al., 2021) through 1)

involvement in several activities such as sorting and

recycling of clothing and other materials; 2) creating

a waste-free café, 3) involvement in municipal waste

separation (Mihaliková and Lachytová, 2020); 4)

providing and improving waste management services

(Mihaliková and Lachytová, 2020). In conclusion, the

present study's findings can support future research in

the growing research area of social entrepreneurship

ecosystems.

There are some limitations of the study. First, the

research focus only on articles published in the

Scopus database from 1990 to 30th March 2022. The

remaining documents, like books, editorial, erratum,

notes, etc., are not considered in the current study.

Second, other databases like Web of Science,

CrossRef, Google Scholar, and Research Gate are not

used. Hence, the current dataset can be extended with

a few additional articles if the same research criteria

are applied to other databases like Web of Science,

CrossRef, Google Scholar, and Research Gate

(Toloo, Khodabandelou and Oukil, 2020). The

second possible option to extend the dataset is to

search documents (e.g., articles, books, conference

papers, editorial, erratum, and notes) in the database

mentioned above from 1997 to 30th August 2022.

DATA AVAILABILITY

Underlying data

Figshare: [Social entrepreneurship ecosystems].

https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.20214590.v1

The project contains the following underlying data:

• [SE and ecosystems] (Dataset).

Extended data

ISWEE 2022 - International Symposium on Water, Ecology and Environment

296

Figshare: [Social entrepreneurship ecosystems].

https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.20216723

This project contains the following extended data:

• Supplementary Table 1.

Data are available under the terms of the Creative

Commons Zero "No rights reserved" data waiver

(CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication).

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author is very thankful to the CERGE-EI Library

and UNWE Library for providing access to the Web

of Science and Scopus databases.

COMPETING INTERESTS

No competing interests were disclosed.

GRANT INFORMATION

This work was supported by the UNWE Research

Programme. Order of the Rector of the UNWE No.

828/01.04.2022

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APPENDIX

Figure 1 and table 1 are presented below. Figure 1

provides information about the selection process of

papers, and table 1 contains the final list of 36

selected articles.

Figure 1: Summarization of the selection process.

Table 1: A final list of 36 articles.

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