Purpose: The objective of this paper is to analyze the evolution of and the latest knowledge in the scientific production on challenges and tensions for the management of social enterprises.
Theoretical framework: the theoretical framework was the basis for the choices made regarding data collection and analyses. For that reason, the theoretical framework of this paper approached social enterprises definition, tensions in social enterprises, and bibliometrics and its fundamental laws.
Method/design/approach: This article is based on the bibliometric method and our final database was composed of 479 articles from Web of Knowledge.
Results and conclusion: We identified that more than 70% of the publications occurred in the last five years. The most cited papers provided important theoretical bases as they address the perspectives of organizational hybridism and social entrepreneurship. These theoretical approaches also converge after 2013. In addition, we identified 12 core journals and three thematic word clusters.
Research implications: We expect to encourage new research within the social entrepreneurship and hybridism theoretical perspectives. We also present questions to be addressed related to how challenges and tensions for the management of social enterprises affect and are affected by decisions regarding value creation and distribution to stakeholders, reframing how stakeholders’ divergent demands are related to tensions.
Originality/value: This article presents a portrait of the literature related to tensions in social enterprises, highlighting the most cited works and authors, and pointing possible research gaps in this field.