How social entrepreneurs search for knowledge to solve complex social problems – An empirically based model and typology
通过对德国和埃塞俄比亚18位社会企业家的访谈，研究提出了社会企业家搜索知识的模型，识别出三种搜索类型（聚焦搜索、试探搜索和混合搜索），并揭示了不同复杂性感知和认知启发式的影响。
In order to tackle today’s grand challenges, we need to better understand how social entrepreneurs (SEs) search for knowledge to solve complex social problems. However, existing search models in social entrepreneurship lack an explicit focus on complexity. To address this gap, our explorative study adopts concepts from organizational search within open innovation as our theoretical lens to analyse 18 narrative interviews with SEs in Germany and Ethiopia. Our findings provide empirical accounts for a social entrepreneurial search model integrating different search mechanisms and search heuristics. We identify three distinct types of SEs who apply the different search types focused search , tentative search and hybrid search based on their different complexity perceptions in different search environments and two distinct normative theories that guide their search as cognitive heuristics. We contribute to both research on organizational search and social entrepreneurship and our findings have practical implications for politicians, social entrepreneurs and educators.