Research Trends in Poverty Alleviation within Social Entrepreneurship Literature

Background & Aims:
Social Enterprises (SE) has been increasingly recognized as a potential solution for alleviation of poverty, lately. Social enterprises are hybrid organizations that are driven by an explicit social objective to aid marginalized and excluded communities while doing so in a way that secures profits for financial sustainability. Poverty is described as both the lack of resources for basic living and deprivation of social and civil liberties. It has been a pervasive issue in societies for the longest time but due to rapid progress in both technology and commerce, global poverty rates have been declining by more than half since the 2000’s. However, with the recent onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, global poverty rates have shot up significantly, threatening to reverse the progress made and plunge many back into poverty once more. Social Enterprises are commonly known for being able to generate employment opportunities for the poor while addressing other facets of poverty like housing, social exclusion, healthcare, and education. This paper intends to conduct a systematic literature review to appraise the research landscape of social enterprise and poverty alleviation literature. Specifically, this paper aims to identify the key research areas, theoretical approaches, and research gaps that underlie the field of social enterprise and poverty alleviation literature.
Design/methodology/approach:
Design of this paper assumed a systematic review approach to orderly guide the review process. PRISMA framework has been used. A preliminary reading of existing articles on the topic was done in order to develop a critical listing of relevant keywords. The keywords were then used to search for articles in two major databases: Scopus, Web of Science. To refine the search, certain exclusion parameters were employed. The final listing of articles was then analyzed for their abstract and content to reveal recurring themes, key concepts, theoretical approaches etc. to reveal the research trends.
Findings:
The broad categories of focus of relevant literature reviewed were: SE – poverty alleviation research contexts, SE phenomena explorations, roles and characterization social enterprises assume in relation to poverty alleviation, SE success factors contributing to poverty alleviation, SE poverty intervention approaches, impact assessment of SE poverty interventions and negative SE poverty intervention outcomes.
Contributions/Implications:
The research behind social enterprise and poverty alleviation literature seems to be limited or underdeveloped. Through the review and synthesizing of the existing literature, we were able to identify the existing research trends and gaps. The findings will provide more clarity to the field and the gaps will provide directions for future research endeavors.