New article in JBV: Rethinking social impact in social entrepreneurship
A new article by Georgios Polychronopoulos, Martin Lukeš, Siddharth Vedula, and Sophie Bacq, published in the prestigious Journal of Business Venturing, addresses one of the key questions in social entrepreneurship: What does social impact actually mean, and how is it created?
Based on a systematic integrative review of 209 academic studies, the authors show that existing research has conceptualized social impact in different ways. The article brings these fragmented perspectives together and identifies two complementary views: social impact as utility and social impact as reform.
The utility perspective understands social impact in terms of improvements in the well-being of individuals, communities, and society. The reform perspective focuses on deeper transformations of social systems, including changes in perceived social roles, social norms, and broader social structures. Like the complementary forces of “yin and yang,” the two perspectives provide distinct but interconnected ways of understanding social impact.
A key contribution of the article is a multilevel framework connecting social impact at the level of individuals, communities and social groups, and society as a whole. The study thereby lays the groundwork for a more comprehensive theory of social impact. It also highlights that social impact should not be reduced to readily measurable outputs alone, but should also account for changes in people’s agency, social norms, and institutional structures.
The article was accepted on 27 July 2026 and is available via DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2026.106630