Social entrepreneurship, along with the broader concept of social innovation, suggests a simultaneous preoccupation with locally-contextualized solutions and with their potential global scalability. To understand this dynamic tension, we must examine the very meanings and relationships embedded within the conceptual web related to social entrepreneurship (SE). Accordingly, this paper asks two related questions: first, what are the discursive origins of distinct meanings and models of social entrepreneurship across national contexts and time? How do these origin and evolution stories help us understand the varying degrees of diffusion and local adaptation of the SE concept? Second, how does the discourse around SE differ among those internal and external to the field? What does the creation of field-level (discursive) boundaries imply for the kinds of SE actors and initiatives that are promoted as categorical archetypes and those that are excluded from the emerging category? Scholars have already recognized the different discursive, social and geographical spaces of entrepreneurship (Stayaert and Katz, 2004) with distinct schools of thought emphasizing the individual social entrepreneur, the social enterprise organization, and the process of social entrepreneurship (Bacq and Janssen, 2011; Perrini et al., 2010). Beyond distinctions at the level of analysis, research has also highlighted global differences between SE conceptions and models in the developed and developing world (Mair and Schoen, 2007; Zahra et al., 2008), transnational differences between European countries and the US (Defourny and Nyssens, 2010), national and regional variability within the European context (Kerlin, 2010) and community-level particularities (Marquis et al., 2007; Smith and Stevens, 2010). Such differences have generally been attributed to diverse historical institutional trajectories (Brandsen et al., 2012) as well as to unique ecosystems governing the role of change agents within (Bies et al., 2007) and the relationship between the public, private and “Third Sector” (Dees and Anderson, 2003; Defourny and Nyssens, 2008; Ferreira, 2014). However, few studies have systematically verified the origins and modern manifestations of different meaning systems and sentiments underlying the notions of social entrepreneurship, social enterprises and social entrepreneurs. This paper seeks to address this gap through an inductive cross-temporal and cross-national textual analysis of the discourse around social entrepreneurship in its various forms.
In a first part, the paper uses media data to establish the broader discursive framework within which social entrepreneurship is embedded in France, the United Kingdom and the United States. Specifically, it examines how precursors and early instantiations of the concept were differently associated with various societal actors (e.g. transnational organizations, the Social Solidarity Economy, the welfare state and public services, private enterprise and corporate social responsibility). A sentiment analysis of the textual corpus also seeks to trace the evolution of public attitudes – as reflected in the media – towards a redefinition of the boundaries between business, government, and civil society in relation to social entrepreneurship initiatives. This first part of the analysis thus establishes the external discursive context around SE. The second part uses LDA and dynamic topic modeling to trace the evolution of the internal discursive context, as constituted by actors within the SE field. It therefore compares the topic structure of how different social entrepreneurs, SE facilitating organizations, and SE platforms and networks make meaning of their actions and identities in relation to other actors and movements. Combined, the two-part analysis sheds light on the interrelated research questions. The findings promise to be of interest to scholars and practitioners engaged with understanding the historicized local adaptation and global diffusion of SE concepts and practices, as well as to those concerned with the potential exclusion of various SE actors and meanings through the formation of field-level and professional boundaries.
Keywords:social entrepreneurship, meaning-making, topic modeling, boundary formation, US-Europe comparison
