Main Article Content
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to gain understanding of the evolution and current state of work done in the field of social entrepreneurship. Bibliographic analyses of 117 papers were used to track the evolving research in the field of social entrepreneurship over past three decades from 1987 to 2018. By content analysis of the established research in the field this paper provides an insight of the subjects emphasised upon by researchers, key areas where the research in the field of social entrepreneurship needs to be addressed and suggests direction for future research in the field of Social Entrepreneurship. Although there is a significant rise in research work in the field of social entrepreneurship, this study shows that research in the field of social entrepreneurship is in the nascent stage. Most of the research is dominant by researchers belonging to US and UK. Domains like Political Science, Economics, Sociology, Education, and Finance increasing their impact in the development of the field. Analysis of statistical status of available researches shows that conceptual articles dominant the empirical articles. There is a lack of theory building and testing in the field of social entrepreneurship. To summarise, future research should draw attention to three big issues: converging empirical results on the social entrepreneurship process, enlarging the field of social entrepreneurship towards new phenomena and broadening the topic.