PhD defence: Institutions and Social Entrepreneurship

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On 11 October 2024, at 14.15 hrs., Xing Li will defend her PhD thesis Institutions and Social Entrepreneurship: A Multilevel Perspective.

The field of social entrepreneurship (SE) is rapidly growing and garnering attention from scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. SE involves identifying and exploiting opportunities to create social value through commercial, market-based activities, effectively combining market elements with societal purposes. It is increasingly recognized as an important approach to addressing societal challenges and problems that are not yet adequately tackled by existing governments, non-profit organizations, or companies, such as poverty and lack of health care or education. 

 While the field of SE spans different levels of analyses typically concentrating on the individual, organizational, and institutional levels, its explanation and effects remain only partially understood. To enrich a comprehensive understanding of SE, Xing Li adopted a multilevel framework in this thesis to explore how broader social and institutional contexts relate to individual antecedents in affecting SE and its social impact.   

Social Entrepreneurship and generating lasting change 


For instance, in one study from her dissertation, she found that individuals with entrepreneurial alertness are more likely to become social entrepreneur in countries with higher levels of unmet basic social needs and regulatory quality. Within her dissertation, she also discovered that social enterprises can engage communities in creating social impact by developing and leveraging specific capabilities, such as effectively managing conflicting interests between social enterprises and communities. 

By gaining a deeper understanding of the multilevel nature of SE through this dissertation, Xing Li hopes to contribute to a society where SE plays a more significant role in generating lasting change in social, cultural, and environmental issues. She also aims to craft effective policies to support the development of SE, such as encouraging the legal status of social enterprises in different countries. 

Xing Li is a post-doc and a PhD student at the Utrecht University School of Economics (U.S.E.).

Start date and time
End date and time
Location
Utrecht University Hall, Domplein 29 Utrecht and online
PhD candidate
X. Li
Dissertation
Institutions and Social Entrepreneurship: A Multilevel Perspective
PhD supervisor(s)
Prof. S.N. Bosma
Co-supervisor(s)
Dr. F.H.J. Polzin
More information
Full text via Utrecht University Repository