External Enablement of Social and Commercial Entrepreneurship

Increasingly, entrepreneurship scholars are using the external enabler framework to explain how environmental changes, so-called external enablers, impact entrepreneurial activities. By providing insights into the applicability and development needs of the external enabler framework based on social entrepreneurship literature, we tease out how this literature stream can inform the external enabler framework. To achieve this, we apply a topic modeling approach to both commercial and social entrepreneurship literature. This approach allows us to disentangle similarities and differences between external enablers of commercial as well as social entrepreneurship. While social entrepreneurship literature would mainly profit from a broader perspective on external enablers (e.g., global social impact vs. local community), social entrepreneurship literature can inform the external enablers framework regarding actor – external enabler interactions, as well as the role of external enablers in narratives. We conclude by providing a research agenda that can guide future research applying the external enabler framework to social and commercial entrepreneurial activities.