Research

From Corporate Social Responsibility to Corporate Social Entrepreneurship

Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been highlighted by business and society as essential. However, CSR investments are predominantly business-driven and have led to missed opportunities in fostering a potentially brand loyal market, developing future employees and entrepreneurs, and facilitating innovation and growth within the broader economy. In order to address these shortcomings, it has been argued that a shift from CSR to corporate social entrepreneurship (CSE) may yield a broader set of benefits. The aim of CSE is to create accelerated and disruptive change in pursuit of new social and economic opportunities, however, research is limited as to the role stakeholders play in this process, especially in contexts of misaligned need. 

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Hidden, K., & Marks, J.T. (2020). Misaligned need in the pursuit of shared value: A multi-stakeholder study of the shift from corporate social responsibility to corporate social entrepreneurship in an emerging economy. Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies, 6(2) 1-20. 

Lighting a Path for Entrepreneurship in South Africa 

Entrepreneurship Research Journal

A consistent theme that runs throughout the contributions in this issue is that, while ecosystem development is necessary everywhere to enhance the economic impact of entrepreneurship, in emerging economies, contextualization is critical. Countries have idiosyncratic histories and development trajectories. Myriad stakeholders participate and shape local ecosystems. To illustrate, this introduction provides an overview of some key venture development initiatives in South Africa, and we consider how venture development organizations, particularly those based at academic institutions, could contribute to the development of the country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. We provide suggestions for policy initiatives and academic research.

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Swartz, E., Marks, J.T., & Scheepers, C. (2020). Venture support organizations - Lighting a path for entrepreneurship in South Africa?. Entrepreneurship Research Journal, 10(2), 1-4. 

Transnational Entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa

Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies

The study seeks to explain how migrants’ access, understand, and recognize the value of new knowledge in enhancing transnational entrepreneurship. This is important as it provides insights into how knowledge is accessed and employed in different contexts to recognize entrepreneurial opportunities. Using the absorptive capacity theory of knowledge spillover entrepreneurship, this study contributes to previous research which has focussed on the scope and boundaries of this phenomenon at a firm or institutional level, but not at the level of the transnational entrepreneur. This study contributes by examining the role of human capital and the prior knowledge and experience that migrants use and acquire in transnational entrepreneurship.

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Marks, J.T., Dawa, S., & Kanyemba, S. (2020). Transnational entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa: An absorptive capacity theory of knowledge spillover entrepreneurship perspective. Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies, 6(1), 114-139. 

The Case of Entrepreneurship in South Africa

Journal of Developmental Entrepreneruship

Why does South Africa underperform on benchmarks for nascent entrepreneurship? We use a contextualization framework to evaluate critically articles on entrepreneurship in South Africa, which appear in seven leading global entrepreneurship journals for the period 1986–2017. The historical and institutional dimensions of the contextualization framework unveil the path-dependent nature of entrepreneurial choice for Black South Africans. This study illustrates the idiosyncratic nature of South Africa and its social, political, and economic transitions, and how these have affected entrepreneurship development, particularly among previously disadvantages Black South Africans.

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Swartz, E., Amatucci, F.M., & Marks, J.T. (2019). Contextual embeddedness as a framework: The case of entrepreneurship in South Africa. Journal of Development Entrepreneurship, 24(3), 1-23