MESSAGE FROM THE GUEST EDITORS: SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND DIGITAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP AS DRIVERS OF SDGs AND POST-COVID-19 ECONOMIC RECOVERY

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2019 dealt a devastating blow to inclusive economic growth, with incalculable financial losses, emotional drain, and psychological pain to governments, workers, employers, and other stakeholders. In both developed and developing countries, all economic development goals including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been badly hit, but developing countries have experienced the worst.

To mitigate the multifaceted impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, academics and technocrats have identified social entrepreneurship, corporate social entrepreneurship, and digital entrepreneurship as plausible drivers and levers for post-pandemic recovery readiness. This is no coincidence, as entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship in traditional and advanced societies have historically promoted value-added ideas, business motivation, ethics, and organizational success.

Entrepreneurship aside, academics and professionals have also recommended the use of digital entrepreneurship as a tipping point to accelerate the transition to recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. It is reassuring to report that various governments, private sector organizations and non-governmental organizations are already using digital entrepreneurship to reinvent the entrepreneurial process and gain a competitive advantage in the changing business environment. The pandemic has slowed the implementation of the SDGs to 2030 by creating major uncertainties in the global economy at a time when concerted efforts are needed to accelerate the SDGs’ 17 goals.

Based on the above, both social entrepreneurship and digital entrepreneurship can be critical drivers for the SDGs and the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The big question this special issue must answer is this special issue of JBEA: How to harness the potential of social entrepreneurship and digital entrepreneurship as drivers of the SDGs and the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic? To explain the benefits of social entrepreneurship and digital entrepreneurship in a pandemic-free situation, this special issue asks for new insights from different perspectives.

The five articles included in this special issue discussed aspects of social entrepreneurship and digital entrepreneurship as drivers of the SDGs and the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. They include the following:

The revealing results of the first paper on social entrepreneurship and organizational engagement in the hospitality industry indicate that social entrepreneurship positively and significantly explains the organizational engagement of the surveyed employees from the industry in Nigeria along the three dimensions of engagement with normative engagement, with the social orientation of the industry showing the greatest effect. The 2021–2022 organizational-level survey concluded that social entrepreneurship is a powerful organizational tool that can be used to drive employee engagement, particularly normative engagement.

The second paper, entitled Social Entrepreneurship: Influence of Personality Traits is a conceptual discourse. At the end of the review of extant literature, the paper found that social entrepreneurs have certain distinct personality traits that describe their behavior/acts. Personality traits are developed in part through innate upbringing, socialization, and education. These implicit properties play an important role when it comes to making social entrepreneurial decisions. The paper suggests that personality traits can influence the way in which the individual acts.

The third article, entitled Impact of Women Social Entrepreneurs on Micro-Enterprises Survival During COVID-19 Pandemic is a survey carried out in Nigeria in 2021–2022. The responses from 1537 managers and owners revealed that women social entrepreneurs played a crucial role during the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria as they were able to alleviate poverty to some extent, promote environmental sustainability, create jobs and promote human capital development. It was also found that the need to eradicate poverty, the desire to make society a better place, empathy, and the desire to make money are the driving factors of women social entrepreneurs.

The fourth paper, titled A Review of Interactive Voice Response System for Enterprise Education, examined the use of the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) mechanism in the delivery of enterprise training to the micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprise (MSME) sectors in Nigeria over a period of time. The theoretical paper noted that the use of learning systems that consider geographic locations without internet infrastructure as well as socio-economic factors of intended and existing entrepreneurs for business education is crucial and equally promising.

Finally, the fifth paper, entitled Nexus between Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development Goals, which is a literature review found that social entrepreneurs have an essential role to play in transforming society by promoting sustainable development and economic growth in the development process of countries.

In summary, the valuable insights from the above five papers have immense implications for managers, policymakers and governments at local, regional and international levels to promote social entrepreneurship and digital entrepreneurship as drivers of the SDGs in the post-COVID-19 economic recovery period to reinvent.

Lukman Raimi

Universiti Brunei Darussalam

Jalan Tungku Link, BE1410

Brunei Darussalam

Lukman.raimi@ubd.edu.bn

Hani El-Chaarani

Beirut Arab University

VFFW+5Q2, Beirut, Lebanon

h.shaarani@bau.edu.lb

Muhammad Usman Tariq

Abu Dhabi School of Management

Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan St - Abu Dhabi

UAE

m.tariq@adsm.ac.ae