Social Entrepreneurship: Concept, essence and meaning

In recent studies of business and management, social entrepreneurship is one of the most actively studied areas. The following article provides analysis of major studies of social entrepreneurship concepts published in scientific magazines from 1998 up to 2014. The research also provides features of social organization and characteristics of social entrepreneur. The concept of social entrepreneurship still poorly studied. That is proved by variety of theoretical studies and by limited number of empirical researches in this area. The main factor that differs social entrepreneurship from traditional one is the ability of entrepreneurs to use special methods. Social entrepreneurship can be defined as; a model of political transformation, process of activity, entrepreneurial behavior of the social initiatives’ beginner who creates social organization and who is interested in tangible results. The research of social entrepreneur defined his ability to find the possibilities in entrepreneurial activities and use resources for achieving social mission and fixing social problems. This ability can be aimed to self-realization of an individual, organization of charity, social help, or result orientated. The main types of social entrepreneur organizations are traditional noncommercial organizations, noncommercial social-oriented firms, hybrid organizations, commercial social-oriented firms. The research shows that Russian practice does not have commercial and noncommercial social-orientated firms and hybrid organizations. As the result, research provides specific major concepts of social entrepreneurship, defined characteristics and nuances of social entrepreneurship, and analysis of social entrepreneurs’ types and intentions.