A Scoping Review of Accountability in Social Entrepreneurship

Abstract

The aim of this article is to do a scoping review of accountability in the context of social entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurship is becoming an important business model, while the concept of accountability is prevalent in today’s environment. The scoping review is a type of literature search with certain important distinctions from a literature review. Systematically, the scoping review explores the literature from a relevance viewpoint rather than by evaluating the quality of the research. Then the data are mapped or charted to identify key themes and gaps in the literature. We observe that accountability in social entrepreneurship is viewed and studied in three different ways: as a relationship between parties, as an outcome, or as a predictor variable. We also observe that most of the research is done in the United States, Europe, and Australia. Finally we observe that research methodologies utilized are primarily based around qualitative methods or conceptual descriptions.