Purpose-Despite growing scholarly v interest in social entrepreneurs and the social enterprises which they create, few studies have examined the hybridity of social enterprises including, surprisingly, whether they adoption an entrepreneurial orientation (EO) One explanation for this may be the continuing lack of an appropriate scale measuring a social entrepreneurship orientation. This paper seeks to address this research gap by proposing an initial social entrepreneurship orientation (SEO) scale based on input from scholars in the fields of entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. Design/methodology/approach-This study presented employed mixed-methods and a two stage design. In stage one a Delphi study with 18 researchers with expertise of investigating entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship was used to generate constructs combining aspects of both social and entrepreneurial orientations. In stage two, we assessed the face validity of the derived items from the Delphi study by conducting a survey with 82 such experts. Findings-The paper provides empirical insights into how SEO can be measured by proposing, for the first time, a 12-item scale with 4 dimensions that allows the measurement of a social entrepreneurship orientation for the first time. Research limitations/implications-We recommend that future studies employ quantitative methods, particularly with firms exhibiting differing levels of the 'socialness' dimension which we propose and that such studies involve a variety of research informants. Statistical analysis of data collected across large sample sizes will help evaluate the reliability and validity of the scale which we propose. Practical implications-The paper includes implications for future research based on the proposed social entrepreneurship orientation measurement scale. Originality/value-This paper develops the first SEO scale based on empirical data collected from experts in the fields of entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship.

Institutional and cultural contexts shape social entrepreneurship differently. This paper explores the roles of culture, socioeconomic development, and governance institutions on the prevalence of social entrepreneurship. The empirical results are based on Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data, including 49 countries across the globe. The results indicate that the negative effect of the level of development holds for entrepreneurial activity in general, but there is no such effect on social entrepreneurship. Of Hofstede's (1980) cultural dimensions, power distance is negatively related to all types of entrepreneurship, and Inglehart's (1997) secular-rational values are positively related to established entrepreneurship. Self-expressive values relate positively with established social entrepreneurship. The results imply that the existence of social problems and/or market failures does not result in higher levels of social entrepreneurship unless the formal institutions are sufficiently developed.

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Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in global economic crisis and whether it can mitigate the negative effects of economic crisis both on firm's operations and on firm's financial performance. Design/methodology/approach -A quantitative approach is used to test the hypotheses. Principal component analysis and multiple regression analysis are used on the empirical survey data. Findings -Results based on a sample of almost 200 Finnish small and medium-sized enterprises indicated that the different dimensions of the EO can have diverging effects on how firms are impacted by the recession. In general, the more innovative and proactive the firm is, the less its operations are affected by the recession and the more risk-taking the firm is, the more its profitability is affected by recession. Research limitations/implications -A longitudinal design -rather than the current cross-sectional design -would give a better premiss to explore the causal relationships among the research variables. Originality/value -The paper is one of the first works linking EO with the effects of recession at the firm's operational level and the paper expands prior knowledge by taking the EO-performance relationship into the context of recession.

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In today's world of increasing ecological, social and economic issues, the question as to how businesses can become a vehicle towards more sustainable development has become more relevant than ever. Crucial to a more sustainable economy is the successful implementation of sustainable practices through entrepreneurial activities. Although there are attempts to describe how sustainable entrepreneurs differentiate themselves, the question of how some entrepreneurs manage to successfully create a sustainable enterprise, while others do not, remains unanswered. The aim of this research is to find causal patterns that explain the success of sustainable entrepreneurs, using their social performance as a measure. Using a configuration approach-based fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) of 598 Austrian small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), we could identify four different combinations of the interconnected variables of innovation orientation, environmental sustainability, resource leveraging and achievement motivation, which all lead to social performance depending on the respective networking intensity of the firms. The only variable that is included in all combinations is environmental sustainability, thus indicating it may be either crucial to or a prerequisite for achieving social performance in SMEs.

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