Introduction

Tourism is potentially transformative, not only for travelers, but for the communities to which tourists travel and the organizations that directly and indirectly serve those visitors. The spending power of tourists, currently over 1.5 trillion dollars for international travelers (UNWTO, 2015), provides a variety of opportunities for both traditional entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs to build businesses that create economic and social value. While aspects of social entrepreneurship have been addressed in various contexts, including—sustainable tourism, pro-poor tourism,

J. Day (*)

Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA e-mail: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

M. Mody

Boston University, Boston, MA, USA e-mail: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

P.J. Sheldon, R. Daniele (eds.), Social Entrepreneurship and Tourism, Tourism on the Verge, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46518-0_4

and community-based tourism to name a few—discussion of social entrepreneurship has been limited. This is not surprising given the study of social entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurs is a “fledgling” field of study, but there is opportunity to further examine the phenomenon. As a foundational component of the study of social entrepreneurship and tourism, this chapter will examine a number of typologies of social entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurship and their relationship to tourism.

Social entrepreneurship has been embraced by many social sector organizations. Social enterprises are contributing positively to overcoming entrenched social issues in a variety of settings, from rural to urban locations and from the developing countries to the most advanced ones. While evidence exists about the effectiveness of the approach, general agreement on the theoretical foundations to explain the phenomenon is lacking. If the examination of social entrepreneurship is “young”, then the examination of social entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurship in tourism is still in its infancy. Yet there are many individuals and groups using tourism related enterprises to achieve important social and environmental objectives and much to learn about this phenomenon. From a tourism perspective, social enterprises range from ecotourism lodges like Guludo Beach Lodge in chapter “Guludo Beach Lodge and the Nema Foundation, Mozambique” to cooperatives providing organic farm fresh food to urban hotels.

Given the nascent state of the field, examination of how researchers have framed and categorized social entrepreneurs and their activities is worthwhile. It provides a useful starting point for deeper examination of the phenomenon and provides context to the many innovative ways tourism enterprises are utilized to address social issues. The current chapter applies a broad definition of typology. It is described as “the study of how things can be can be divided into types; study of or analysis or classification based on types or categories (“Merriam-Webster.com,” n.d., p. 360)”. The chapter will examine research that addresses typologies, categorizations and models to better understand current thinking about the nature of social entrepreneurship. Understanding the dimensions into which groups can be categorized provides insight about important characteristics within a group and shared characteristics between groups within the phenomenon (Woo, Cooper, & Dunkelberg, 1991). Woo et al. (1991) also noted that typologies and classifications are developed through both empirical analysis and conceptual formulation; this is also true in the study of social entrepreneurs and social enterprises. In some cases, the development of typologies leads to specific theory development (Doty & Glick, 1994) but, at least, one can reasonably propose that “typologies organize existing knowledge that help explain relationships and guide theory development” (Kirch- hoff, 1994, p. 422). Such an approach has been important in the development of business-related topics like strategy, organization, and entrepreneurship more so than traditional sciences (Woo et al., 1991). The typologies and categorizations overlap as they examine social entrepreneurship and socially-entrepreneurial organizations through different frames, deepening one’s understanding of social entrepreneurship and revealing emergent themes in the current research. While there are a variety of perspectives on SE and SEO, the extant research is predominantly presented from the perspective of the social sector. The current chapter examines models, categorizations and typologies of entrepreneurship, social sector organizations and SEO. Informed by these foundational studies, the present researchers seek to better understand Social Entrepreneurial activity in the tourism system.