In Academia

A review of the status of social entrepreneurship studies in academia can be found in Volkmann et al. (2012). On university campuses, social entrepreneurship has mostly been studied through the disciplines of business economics, public administration and other social sciences (Rey-Marti, Ribiero-Soriano, & Palacios- Marques, 2016). It is often seen as a sub-set of studies on entrepreneurship as evidenced by the top five journals publishing most of the research on social entrepreneurship at the present time. These journals are Journal of Business Venturing, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Journal of Business Ethics and International Small Business Journal. Smith-Hunter (2008) suggests that the study of social entrepreneurship be expanded to include knowledge from different disciplines other than business, in particular that of human capital and network structures. The importance of networks and stable eco-systems for social entrepreneurship is critical for their longevity (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, 2014). Now a few journals devote themselves specifically to social entrepreneurship: the “Social Enterprise Journal” published by Emerald Publishers; the “International Journal of Social Entrepreneurship and

Innovation” published by Inderscience, and the “Journal of Social Entrepreneurship” published by Routledge.

The tourism academic literature, on the other hand, is full of studies on entrepreneurship but very few of them focus on the social entrepreneur. Many chapters in this book bemoan that fact, and so each chapter author has had to start from scratch in creating concepts and frameworks and has leaned heavily on the generic literature in the area to move the study of tourism social entrepreneurship forward. It is our contention that tourism and hospitality are unique enough, and the field is especially rich in opportunity, that the application of thought from generic social entrepreneurship research will provide a platform for new ideas, concepts and frameworks to the study of tourism social entrepreneurship.