Defining the Social and the Good in Social Entrepreneurship: Stoic Ethics as a Conceptual Foundation

Abstract

The literature on social entrepreneurship lacks a coherent ethical foundation because it does not define the key terms social and good that underwrite its normative claims. This article reviews and synthesises existing definitions to show how this definitional ambiguity generates ethical and conceptual instability across theory and practice. It advances Stoicism as a conceptual corrective to the field’s definitional and normative ambiguities. In Stoicism, human beings are rational and social by nature; ethical action consists in living according to the virtues—wisdom, justice, courage and moderation—while preserving the communal bonds that sustain human flourishing. On this account, social denotes actions that maintain and strengthen communal harmony, and good denotes conduct aligned with virtue. Applying this Stoic framework reframes the field’s central question from ‘What outcomes or missions make an enterprise social?’ to ‘What makes an enterprise ethical?’ This shift provides a coherent normative grounding for social entrepreneurship, offering clearer ethical guidance for entrepreneurs and scholars and a conceptual platform for future research in social entrepreneurship ethics, theory development and empirical research.