Social entrepreneurship and well-being: The configurational impact of institutions and social capital

Social entrepreneurship (SE) is often viewed as an effective means to promote social well-being (SWB). However, how SE emerges from a country’s institutional and social context, and consequently, how the institutional and social embeddedness of SE influences the level of SWB in a particular country, remains unanswered. This study, utilizing fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), addresses these questions by exploring, (1) the configurations of institutional and social capital conditions that lead to high prevalence rates of different types of SE activities in a country, and (2) the configurations of such institutionally and socially embedded SE activities that deliver high level of SWB in a country. It advances the SE literature by revealing the embeddedness and configurational nature of SE. Specifically, multiple equifinal configurations of socio-political conditions can lead to high prevalence rates of not-for-profit SE and hybrid SE. Moreover, this study finds that while both not-for-profit SE and hybrid SE can facilitate SWB by interacting with socio-political conditions, they do so through different mechanisms.