Unpacking the Antecedents of the Emergence of Social Entrepreneurship

The recent “narrative” turn in social entrepreneurship (SE) research offers new opportunities to advance hybrid organizations (Doherty, Haugh and Lyon, 2014) as the theoretical foundation of SE. Despite the burgeoning research on SE, there is a dearth of research that investigates narratives that explain the emergence of SE in the form of hybrid organizations on a large scale. Drawing on the “narrative” perspective of SE (Chandra 2016; Ruebottom 2013), we examine the biographical profiles of 200 self-identified social entrepreneurs who were selected as fellows by two of the world’s largest SE support organizations: Ashoka and the Schwab Foundation. Using the Gioia’s methodology (Gioia, Corley, & Hamilton, 2013) and content analysis, this study makes a novel contribution by revealing nine antecedents—five major (i.e., prior knowledge, altruism, distressing personal experiences, social networks, and higher education) and four minor (i.e., family influences, socio-political activism experience, volunteer experience, and religious influences) antecedents—of the emergence of SE in the form of hybrid organizations. Five of these antecedents constitute SE’s social welfare logic, and four constitute SE’s commercial logic. We also found similarities between the antecedents of the emergence of SE and the factors that drive non-profits, social activism, volunteering and commercial entrepreneurship. Finally, we discuss the implications of this study for the SE-as-hybrid-organizations literature; highlight its limitations and present possible avenues for future research.