Social entrepreneurship vs. traditional entrepreneurship

In our latest research that appeared in the Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, Chantal Hartog (Panteia/EIM Business and Policy Research, The Netherlands), Brigitte Hoogendoorn (Erasmus University, The Netherlands) and myself explored the differences between social and commercial entrepreneurship from an organizational perspective. Indeed, the concurrent social and financial value creation is likely to result from innovative business models and sustainability strategies that might differ from commercial ones. However, empirical studies to date have tended to focus on a given set of (usually successful) social entrepreneurs and omit control groups. Indeed, despite growing attention and recognition of the social entrepreneurship phenomenon, the related research field is still in its infancy, characterized by a modest base for theory building and testing purposes and a limited number of empirical studies, mostly designed as case studies.