C. Canfield

"The mobilization of social resources for addressing urgent societal needs under market assumptions is a major component of the strategy for development. Social enterprises as an alternative source of public goods and services attract the attention of academics, practitioners and policy-makers to the efficient use of entrepreneurial resources. Initially this study aims to provide a more systematic understanding about the factors that affect the probabilities of success of socially oriented undertakings and contributes to the literature by answering the call for more empirical research about such effects over their performance. Using a logistic regression model on data from a sample of socially oriented ventures in 148 countries participating in the 2013-2016 Entrepreneurship Database Program at Emory University, the positive effects of such factors were first validated. At a later stage, this quest attempted to find differential behaviors of these effects by comparing operations in OECD and developing countries. No conclusive evidence for dissimilarities between groups was found. This result could be partially attributed to the accelerator´s selection processes favoring companies with a proven record. Important global policy implications are drawn in support of harmonized social-entrepreneurship promotion programs and the adoption of standardized impact measurement criteria. This argument raises ample academic and practical possibilities for investigating the impact of socio-economic and cultural influences on the efficacy of social enterprise´s interventions. After controlling for the efficient use of entrepreneurial resources, teams made-up of civil society organizations, businesses and government institutions can allocate their attention to those country-specific situations affecting the efficacy of development programs such as the problems to be solved, the particularity of the eco-systems and the adequacy of the organizational arrays adopted."

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