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This study aims to expand the concept of business growth by incorporating sustainability demands, particularly in the context of the Anthropocene era. It explores the growth trajectories of social enterprises (SEs) and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), examining how SEs integrate social and environmental objectives into their growth process. Through a systematic literature review (SLR), this study compares these approaches with traditional SME growth paradigms, highlighting the need for a holistic understanding of business growth that addresses contemporary socioenvironmental challenges.

A qualitative SLR was conducted, using a structured search algorithm to identify and evaluate research on growth and scaling in SMEs and SEs. The search of the Web of Science database with specific growth-related keywords yielded 5,362 articles, which were narrowed to 194 after filtering by journal relevance. Content analysis, guided by an inductively developed codebook, examined growth definitions, operationalizations, and methodologies. This paper focused on key growth dimensions (economic, social and environmental) and identified whether growth was addressed as an outcome or process, along with its enablers and barriers.

While there are areas of intersection between the literatures, the findings reveal that traditional SME growth frameworks do not entirely align with SEs growth conception and management. Furthermore, SE’s growth barriers and facilitators, as well as growth trajectories more broadly, emerge as distinct from those of traditional SMEs. The results distill insights from SE growth paths that can be valuable for traditional SME managers, particularly in terms of managing stakeholders and the institutional environment. Social entrepreneurs commonly use strategies for reshaping business norms, influencing consumer culture and raising social issues awareness, leveraging the values of stakeholders to secure essential support.

As SMEs confront escalating pressure to align with the sustainable development agenda, the findings underscore the critical significance of drawing insights from the burgeoning SE growth literature. This suggests that traditional SME growth literature stands to gain invaluable insights from recent SE research, fostering a more nuanced comprehension of sustainability-centric SME growth trajectories.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

This paper explored the business growth path for social enterprises in comparison to traditional businesses.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The objective of this study is to review the main studies of social entrepreneurship (SE) in Latin America, to categorize them into four categories. To accomplish this, a bibliometric literature review is carried out based on data from the Web of Science database, to locate the Latin American collection of studies. In this way, the main studies are described and grouped, following a qualitative scheme that allows to substantiate the main findings of the Latin authors. Consequently, the progress made in the literature of the SE for Latin America is corroborated, by visualizing that the SE turns out to be a forceful fact to manage well-being, but that it is faced with an inconsistent development.