Select conclusive thoughts and perspectives to guide further research

The different chapters of this book represent a first attempt to acknowledge how ethics influences the antecedents, outcomes, and processes associated with social innovation and social enterprises. In this concluding chapter we elaborate on each chapter’s contributions to suggest some avenues for future research in the fields of social innovation and social enterprises and to reconnect them to broader theoretical research streams. Research in (social) entrepreneurship can investigate how different ethical drivers motivate and shape socially entrepreneurial initiatives; organizational scholars should instead study how different ethical motives influence coordinating mechanisms within social enterprises and in cross-sectoral partnerships. Accounting research can investigate how to measure social impact taking into account the ethical expectations of multiple stakeholders, beneficiaries included. Strategy research can disentangle the ethical challenges and opportunities associated with different scaling strategies of social innovations and social entrepreneurial initiatives. Scholars can also adopt an organizational behavioral perspective to disentangle how ethical values and sense of purpose influence decision making processes in business initiatives aimed at addressing societal problems. While presenting these broad avenues for further research, in this concluding chapter we also suggest specific research questions inspired by the various contributions of this book.