Bibliometrics of social entrepreneurship research : cocitation and bibliographic coupling analyses

The purpose of this paper is to provide conceptual structure, explore current research directions, and suggest emerging trends in social entrepreneurship. The authors ultilize co-citation analysis as well as bibliographic coupling analysis to analyze 1122 social entrepreneurship publications thought VOS Viewer software. Co-citation analysis was used to explore the structure of the research topic, while bibliographic coupling analysis was used to identify potential research topics. Based on themes from co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling analysis, the authors compared similarities and differences between themes to explore potential research groups in SE, for instance, hybrid organizations, social value creation, dimensions, and measurement of social goals. This is the first study using co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling analysis to review publications related to social entrepreneurship. This research study contributes to the social entrepreneurship literature by enhancing the understanding of the structures in social entrepreneurship through citations, as well as can be employed to support scholars in other for recognizing future research directions.