Digital Innovations for Good: A Bibliometric Study of Social Entrepreneurship Digitalization

As social enterprises seek out new tools to broaden the scope of their activities, digitisation is emerging as an important topic of interest to practitioners and researchers alike. Despite this interest, a gap persists in terms of bibliometric reviews concerning this research topic. This article aims to fill this gap by conducting a bibliometric review of the literature via semantic analysis, keyword-occurrences and co-authorship networks analysis in order to identify the research dynamics, the most cited articles and journals and the collaboration networks in the research field studied. The results show a remarkable increase in the number of articles published between 2011 and 2023, with the United States ranking first among the countries with the highest number of contributions. Thus, emerging markets case studies represents the most productive journal in terms of publications. Research trends include are digital platforms, e.g., crowdfunding; sustainable business models; and managerial resilience in times of crisis. This research will enable researchers and stakeholders in the social entrepreneurship ecosystem to better understand the dynamics of research on the subject of the digitalisation of social entrepreneurship. Future research should further study aspects of inclusive entrepreneurship; social impact assessment of digital initiatives and ethical considerations regarding the use of technological innovation, e.g., Artificial intelligence in social entrepreneurship.