Entrepreneurial teams in social new venture creation: A research agenda

Social entrepreneurial projects are in majority undertaken by teams. Despite their quantitative prevalence, social entrepreneurial teams (SETs) remain quite absent from the scholarly literature. In this paper, we argue that because social entrepreneurship is characterized by an inherent tension between social and economic dimensions or logics, which may translate into paradoxes within the whole entrepreneurial process as well as within the team, SETs constitute singular entrepreneurial teams. Research is thus needed to evaluate to what extent findings on entrepreneurial teams apply in a social entrepreneurship setting and identify the specific issues of SETs that should be addressed. Moreover, we believe that this distinctiveness could be a source of learning for conventional entrepreneurial teams as SETs offer a remarkable setting for examining organizational tensions and how to effectively tap the power of paradox. Our contribution is thus guided by two questions: what are the critical issues for SETs and what would be fruitful ways to address these key issues? We start by setting the context by briefly presenting social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial teams research as well as existing research at their intersection and develop a definition of SETs. We then introduce the critical issues that need attention from researchers. In a third and last part, we list the suggested research questions and discuss the most fruitful ways to tackle them and hence effectively advance the topic.