Essays on Social Entrepreneurship in Low- / Low-Middle-Income Countries

With growing academic interest on “grand challenges”, i.e., highly significant but potentially solvable problems like poverty, hunger, climate change, etc., several business organizations have started to adopt different social and environmental missions. Social enterprises are a form of business organizations that pursue both social and financial missions, thus aiming to address certain grand challenge. While prior studies reveal valuable insights on social enterprises, there are still several gaps in our understanding of these organizations. For example, we do not fully know about the nature of organizational processes or founding resources that help in the successful establishment of social enterprises or the sustenance of their dual missions. Moreover, there are limited studies that describe social entrepreneurship in low- / low-middle-income countries (sometimes referred to as developing economies). Given the institutional limitations and resource constraints in these contexts, social enterprises may encounter different challenges in these regions. This dissertation is a study of key aspects of social entrepreneurship related to their establishment, sustenance, and the resources and practices that facilitate their success as hybrids in low- / low-middle-income countries. To understand the sustenance of the social and financial missions of social enterprises, I analyze B-Corp certified social enterprises in South Asia. Through qualitative inductive analysis, I identify the changes that these firms undergo during B-Corp certification, and how these changes enable the firms to maintain their financial and social missions. My study throws light on category clarity in social enterprises. To understand how social enterprises are established in low- / low-middle-income countries, I examine the phenomenon of reverse migration, i.e., migration of individuals from high-income countries to low-income ones with the goal to establish a social enterprise. I use fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (QCA; fsQCA) and resource mobilization framework to identify the resource combinations that lead to successful social venture establishment.Doctor of Philosoph