Social entrepreneurship profiles: lessons from organizational and management dynamics

Abstract

This paper discusses how the concept of social entrepreneurship has been applied in Portuguese Third Sector organizations. It draws on the empirical findings of a survey carried out on a sample of 89 organizations, in which data on key features of organizational dynamics were collected. Strongly rooted in mainstream European theories of social entrepreneurship, the authors propose a typology of three profiles of social entrepreneurship based on different configurations of key features of organizations, namely, models of work organization; coordination/leadership; human resources management; and funding and action planning.