Multilevel causal mechanisms in social entrepreneurship: the enabling role of social capital

We take a new mechanism-based approach to explain how social entrepreneurship emerges from the interaction of multilevel elements, based on case study evidence from China. Informed by Coleman’s ‘boat model’ of social mechanisms, social capital theory and a critical realist ontology, we highlight three mechanisms – the sparking, manifesting and scaling mechanisms – which collectively generate the social entrepreneurship phenomenon. When enabled by social capital, these mechanisms explain the causal relations between the multilevel elements of social entrepreneurship: social needs, social entrepreneurial ideas and practice, market creation and social impact. This framework generates novel insights into the multilevel nature of social entrepreneurship, and the central role of social capital in enabling its underlying mechanisms.