Social entrepreneurship is a relevant field of study from sociological and research-based perspectives ^[1][8]. Social entrepreneurs are oriented towards a social mission ^[2][9]; they pursue a fair distribution of social income ^[3][10], focusing on alleviating the most unfavored segments of society ^[4][11] and establishing commercial profit as a secondary priority ^[5][12].

Social entrepreneurs deal with opposing forces in a continuous effort to balance brain and heart, logic and feelings, and results and values ^[6][13]. They build their projects by combining ideas, passion, and engagement from every relevant person in the organization. They elaborate a common discourse, incorporating all possible sensitivities and priorities ^[7][14].

These entrepreneurs need to be in the marketplace, offering competitive products and services ^[8][15]. They have beneficiaries, not only customers, who need those products and services, which they cannot afford ^[9][16]. Following the inner purpose of their organizations is the best way to make them sustainable ^[10][17]. The commercial perspective should be compatible with the mission statement ^[11][12][13][18,19,20] and very much connected with a specific local community’s needs and aspirations ^[14][15][16][21,22,23].

Social entrepreneurs live in what Swanson and Zhang ^[17][24] call “the social entrepreneurship zone”, including social change as part of their mission. However, they do not want to depend on external resources that they cannot control. They want to generate their own sources of income in order to be sustainable and be able to accomplish their social missions in the long run. A commercial activity offers social entrepreneurship more flexibility and autonomy in its operations. However, excessive dependence on their commercial activity might be a concern for this kind of organization, as they risk losing focus on fulfilling their social missions. Many questions, still to be fully answered, can be raised in that respect: Can social entrepreneurship behave like a commercial enterprise and still accomplish its social mission? Will commercial activity negatively affect a social entrepreneurship’s reputation, or could it be considered a new source of legitimacy in a changing environment in terms of resource management? There is still uncertainty today about the impact of commercial strategies on the fundamental cultural values of these institutions. As Froelich ^[18][25] states, existing studies initially manifest the compatibility between this commercial approach and the preservation of founding mission statements due to the flexibility that it allows. However, future research must establish a more precise conclusion to this issue.

Social entrepreneurships are born within a context of high volatility and uncertainty. They depend on vital resources, the supply of which may be affected by unknown circumstances, damaging the effectiveness and efficiency of their operations ^[19][26]. Resource dependence theory helps in identifying these potential problems ^[20][27] and offers alternative solutions to satisfy stakeholders’ needs ^[21][28] without losing control over the mission to accomplish ^[22][29].

Resource dependence theory develops the idea of interdependence ^[23][30], meaning that anyone acting in a certain context depends on others in terms of vital resources for its operations in that context ^[24][31]. That is why the ability of social entrepreneurs to establish rich and long-term alliances with different stakeholders, in a kind of resource exchange process, makes their ventures more productive and sustainable ^[25][26][32,33]. These symmetric relationships are based on mutual trust, with frequent and close interactions not only on a professional basis but with a personal touch too ^[27][28][29][34,35,36]. Resource dependence theory is a good reference to understand the difficulty and complexity of managing scarce resources in the most collaborative and efficient way ^[30][31][37,38].

Social entrepreneurships bring social change ^[32][39] through creative initiatives ^[13][33][20,40], contributing to solving social problems ^[34][41]. They efficiently manage scarce resources with new transformative ideas, improving vulnerable people´s lives ^[35][36][37][42,43,44]. None of these would be possible without close interaction with their local communities ^[38][39][45,46] and the persistent commitment of prominent local members ^[40][41][47,48]. To achieve their objectives, social entrepreneurs build rich platforms for collaboration ^[42][49]; they welcome everyone who is able to contribute to the solution of the social problem they want to solve ^[27][28][29][34,35,36].

Social entrepreneurs have become role models for an alternative professional career path to develop sustainable socio-economic projects with their narratives and psychological circumstances ^[43][50]. Analyzing these narratives can lead us to the biographical aspects of their lives and backgrounds that are related to their intentions to build their social enterprises ^[44][45][51,52]. Identifying and describing the specific social entrepreneurial intentions and motives have been another critical issue in understanding the determinants behind social entrepreneurship ^[46][47][48][53,54,55]. Social entrepreneurs can then become role models to be followed by young graduates in order to build personally fulfilling and socially beneficial careers ^[49][50][56,57].

In their decision-making process ^[51][58], social entrepreneurs have a clear motivational component that includes aspects such as the desire to become so and how feasible they think this might be. The motivational component has a lot to do with the entrepreneurial intention process, connected with the entrepreneurs’ desire and conviction to start their ventures ^[9][16]. The feasibility that they see in that accomplishment is related to the personal resources that they have developed in terms of personal competence and self-efficacy, with external facilitating factors such as social support ^[52][53][54][59,60,61].

Personal resources are another critical component of this decision-making process. Some authors connect this component with the concept of human capital, which includes aspects such as knowledge, skills, and the ability to integrate other people´s resources ^{[55][56][57][58]}[62,63,64,65]. An essential part of that knowledge is understanding customers´ needs and satisfying them in innovative ways ^[53][59][60,66]. Other researchers have identified some critical abilities in the decision-making process, aligned with what they consider virtuous entrepreneurial behaviors ^[60][67]. Four of them are dominantly mentioned: entrepreneurial opportunities recognition, innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking ^[61][62][68,69]. Another vital skill is especially present in later stages of the decision-making process: learning ^[63][70]. The decision-making process of social entrepreneurs involves learning orientation and learning capability as key adaptative instruments to manage the impact of uncertain influence factors ^[64][71].

Finally, there is a third component related to all the external circumstances that might positively influence the final decision of these entrepreneurs to initiate their projects. There are authors relating this component to the concept of social capital, which includes environmental and institutional factors such as financial support, education programs, public policies, and network relationships ^[65][66][72,73]. Networking is both an external factor facilitating entrepreneurship in its initial phase and a personal resource in terms of the social entrepreneurs´ ability to build their network ^[67][74].

Social entrepreneurship has a unique strategy adaptation: building alliances with different stakeholders to manage uncertain factors in a diverse manner ^[68][75]. High levels of uncertainty and resource limitations make social entrepreneurs very efficient managers, keen on identifying market opportunities, building strategic alliances, and approaching every challenge in the most flexible way ^[69][76]. The decision-making process of these entrepreneurs is meant to answer this simple question: what can be done, in terms of mission accomplishment, with the resources at hand to fulfill their aspirations ^[70][77]. Decision-making is then equivalent to a learning process with no linear progression, adapting to every relevant circumstance changing in the environment ^[71][78].

As we can see in Table 1, different authors concur in studying the factors behind the decision to launch a social enterprise. We integrate these different factors into a classification with three main categories: motivations, personal internal resources, and external facilitating factors. A fourth category, “unintended consequences”, is much less present in the literature, with only some scarce references to “unexpected spillovers” ^[72][79].

Shaw and Carter ^[73][80] conducted inductive research that led them to identify the “emotional antecedents” and “themes” found in the interviews of a broad sample of social entrepreneurs. In a different line of study, some authors ^[74][75][81,82] have produced theoretical papers summarizing the “motivations” leading to setting a social enterprise. Others ^[46][48][72][53,55,79] have established social entrepreneurs’ “motives” based on case studies. A study by Chandra et al. ^[44][51] shows a quantitative analysis aimed at clustering social enterprises by the motive behind their creation.

Accordingly, we elaborate the following proposition:

From the studies mentioned above, we have extracted some key concepts related to what we consider “personal internal resources”. For example (see Table 1), we integrate into “connection skills” aspects such as network embeddedness ^[73][80], integrative thinking ^[74][81], stakeholder involvement ^[72][79], and collectivism ^[44][51].

Accordingly, we elaborate the following proposition:

Previous literature is coincidental in underlying the dominant effects of some external conditions related to the context in which social entrepreneurs decide to start their projects. We have labeled all these conditions under the category of “external facilitating factors”. For example (see Table 1), we compile in “financial and social support” issues such as institutional conditions ^[74][81], resources ^[44][51], and nature of financial risk and profit ^[73][80].

Accordingly, we present this proposition: