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Social entrepreneurship is a successful activity to solve social problems and economic challenges. Social entrepreneurship uses for-profit industry techniques and tools to build financially sound businesses that provide nonprofit services. Social entrepreneurial activities also lead to the achievement of sustainable development goals. However, due to the complex, hybrid nature of the business, social entrepreneurial activities are typically supported by macrolevel determinants. To expand our knowledge of how beneficial macro-level determinants can be, this work examines empirical evidence about the impact of macro-level determinants on social entrepreneurship. Another aim of this dissertation is to examine the impact at the micro level, as the growth ambitions of social and commercial entrepreneurs differ. At the beginning, the introductory section is explained in Chapter 1, which contains the motivation for the research, the research question, and the structure of the work.
There is an ongoing debate about the origin and definition of social entrepreneurship. Therefore, the numerous phenomena of social entrepreneurship are examined theoretically in the previous literature. To determine the common consensus on the topic, Chapter 2 presents
the theoretical foundations and definition of social entrepreneurship. The literature shows that a variety of determinants at the micro and macro levels are essential for the emergence of social entrepreneurship as a distinctive business model (Hartog & Hoogendoorn, 2011; Stephan et al., 2015; Hoogendoorn, 2016). It is impossible to create a society based on a social mission without the support of micro and macro-level-level determinants. This work examines the determinants and consequences of social entrepreneurship from different methodological perspectives. The theoretical foundations of the micro- and macro-level determinants influencing social entrepreneurial activities were discussed in Chapter 3. The purpose of reproducibility in research is to confirm previously published results (Hubbard et al., 1998; Aguinis & Solarino, 2019). However, due to the lack of data, lack of transparency of methodology, reluctance to publish, and lack of interest from researchers, there is a lack of promoting replication of the existing research study (Baker, 2016; Hedges & Schauer, 2019a). Promoting replication studies has been regularly emphasized in the business and management literature (Kerr et al., 2016; Camerer et al., 2016). However, studies that provide replicability of the reported results are considered rare in previous research (Burman et al., 2010; Ryan & Tipu, 2022). Based on the research of Köhler and Cortina (2019), an empirical study on this topic is carried out in Chapter 4 of this work.
Given this focus, researchers have published a large body of research on the impact of microand macro-level determinants on social inclusion, although it is still unclear whether these studies accurately reflect reality. It is important to provide conceptual underpinnings to the field through a reassessment of published results (Bettis et al., 2016). The results of their research make it abundantly clear that the macro determinants support social entrepreneurship.
In keeping with the more narrative approach, which is a crucial concern and requires attention, Chapter 5 considered the reproducibility of previous results, particularly on the topic of social entrepreneurship. We replicated the results of Stephan et al. (2015) to establish the trend of reproducibility and validate the specific conclusions they drew. The literal and constructive replication in the dissertation inspired us to explore technical replication research on social entrepreneurship. Chapter 6 evaluates the fundamental characteristics that have proven to be key factors in the growth of social ventures. The current debate reviews and references literature that has specifically focused on the development of social entrepreneurship. An empirical analysis of factors directly related to the ambitious growth of social entrepreneurship is also carried out.
Numerous social entrepreneurial groups have been studied concerning this association. Chapter 6 compares the growth ambitions of social and traditional (commercial) entrepreneurship as consequences at the micro level. This study examined many characteristics of social and commercial entrepreneurs' growth ambitions. Scholars have claimed to some extent that the growth of social entrepreneurship differs from commercial entrepreneurial activities due to objectivity differences (Lumpkin et al., 2013; Garrido-Skurkowicz et al., 2022). Qualitative research has been used in studies to support the evidence on related topics, including Gupta et al (2020) emphasized that research needs to focus on specific concepts of social entrepreneurship for the field to advance. Therefore, this study provides a quantitative, analysis-based assessment of facts and data. For this purpose, a data set from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2015 was used, which examined 12,695 entrepreneurs from 38 countries. Furthermore, this work conducted a regression analysis to evaluate the influence of various social and commercial characteristics of entrepreneurship on economic growth in developing countries. Chapter 7 briefly explains future directions and practical/theoretical implications.
Some of the largest firms in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) are (partially) owned by a foundation and/or a family office, such as Aldi, Bosch, or Rolex. Despite their growing importance, prior research neglected to analyze the impact of these intermediaries on the firms they own. This dissertation closes this research gap by contributing to a deeper understanding of two increasingly used family firm succession vehicles, through four empirical quantitative studies. The first study focuses on the heterogeneity in foundation-owned firms (FOFs) by applying a descriptive analysis to a sample of 169 German FOFs. The results indicate that the family as a central stakeholder in a family foundation fosters governance that promotes performance and growth. The second study examines the firm growth of 204 FOFs compared to matched non-FOFs from the DACH region. The findings suggest that FOFs grow significantly less in terms of sales but not with regard to employees. In addition, it seems that this negative effect is stronger for the upper than for the middle or lower quantiles of the growth distribution. Study three adopts an agency perspective and investigates the acquisition behavior within the group of 164 FOFs. The results reveal that firms with charitable foundations as owners are more likely to undertake acquisitions and acquire targets that are geographically and culturally more distant than firms with a family foundation as owner. At the same time, they favor target companies from the same or related industries. Finally, the fourth study scrutinizes the capital structure of firms owned by single family-offices (SFOs). Drawing on a hand-collected sample of 173 SFO-owned firms in the DACH region, the results show that SFO-owned firms display a higher long-term debt ratio than family-owned firms, indicating that SFO-owned firms follow trade-off theory, similar to private equity-owned firms. Additional analyses show that this effect is stronger for SFOs that sold their original family firm. In conclusion, the outcomes of this dissertation furnish valuable research contributions and offer practical insights for families navigating such intermediaries or succession vehicles in the long term.