Social entrepreneurship, value creation, and sustainability: Systematic review and thematic mapping of the research

This chapter presents an in-depth examination and analysis of published literature indexed in Scopus database on social entrepreneurship, sustainability, and value creation. A descriptive bibliometric analysis coupled with content analysis is presented incorporating citations included in Scopus' multidisciplinary database over the last 20 years. Two software packages, VOS Viewer and Bibliometrix R, were employed to probe the research questions and create visualizations of the bibliometric networks. The interconnected and multifaceted nature of the research field is demonstrated, thematic evolution is illustrated, and emerging clusters are identified. Findings suggest that the research on social entrepreneurship, sustainability, and value creation has been pioneered by USA followed by India and other countries. Also, further steps need to be undertaken to encourage and enable cross-border international collaboration to draw learning together from different national and regional contexts.