This study undertakes a bibliometric analysis to explore how research on social entrepreneurship (SE) and social innovation has evolved in emerging economies between 1986 and 2023. Although SE has attracted increasing global attention for its role in tackling socio-economic challenges, its development within emerging market contexts is still not well understood. By tracing thematic shifts, intellectual undercurrents and influential contributors, this review pays particular attention to the role of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in shaping SE practices, especially in environments marked by institutional gaps and limited resources. Drawing from 738 articles indexed in the Scopus database, the study analyses patterns in co-authorship, citation trends, keyword clusters and bibliographic connections. Notably, the findings show an uptick in SE-related publications after 2015, with Sustainability emerging as a key journal and Universitat de València leading institutional contributions. However, there remains a stark underrepresentation of research grounded in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America. The analysis offers both a synthesis of current trends and a roadmap for future inquiry, emphasising the need for more regionally grounded, context-sensitive scholarship on EO in SE.
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