Social enterprises (SEs) that receive early stakeholder support for their dual economic/social missions risk losing moral legitimacy when stakeholders assess them for social impact and find it lacking. We present a process model that begins at the “fork in the road” of stakeholder assessment and shows that when SEs continue to focus on primary stakeholders at the expense of secondary stakeholders impacted by the firm, they risk losing moral legitimacy and broader stakeholder support. Our model shows the process by which SEs can leverage their moral imagination and develop capabilities to generate long-term stakeholder support and sustained value creation.

Strategic entrepreneurship integrates the fields of strategy and entrepreneurship to consider firms’ simultaneous engagement in opportunity- and advantage-seeking behaviors to create wealth. Since its conceptualization in the early 2000s, the study of SE has gained considerable momentum. At the same time, some scholars criticize SE and question its comprehensiveness as a way to understand the strategic application of entrepreneurship. We present a comprehensive review and integration of research related to the study of SE as a construct, theoretical model, and research domain. In doing this, we offer a research agenda across these different approaches to the study of SE.