Understanding Legitimacy and Social Entrepreneurship - A Structured Literature Review

This structured literature review explores the alignment and potential synergies between human resource development (HRD) and social entrepreneurship within the United States. The study’s guiding questions investigated how social entrepreneurship is characterized in scholarly articles and where HRD research and practice intersect with social entrepreneurship. Based on literature from 2006 to 2021, this study found that social entrepreneurship lacks cognitive legitimacy and is framed as (a) pragmatically legitimate, (b) at both individual and organizational levels, and (c) as a virtuous practice. Building on system theory, the study suggests that social entrepreneurship organizations are adaptive systems, and HRD professionals can support organizational strategies by practicing various processes, including skill development, ethical training, and ensuring personnel alignment with the organization’s social mission. However, research on social entrepreneurship in HRD is rare. The central contribution of this paper is to conceptualize how HRD can contribute to the advancement of social entrepreneurship.