Relational Embeddedness and Knowledge Sharing: The Case of Social Entrepreneurship

While literature in social entrepreneurship emphasises the key role of social entrepreneurs' embeddedness in their networking relationships and social value creation, more interest should be directed to knowledge-sharing issues.Based on in-depth interviews with fifteen social entrepreneurs, this research examines the relationship between social entrepreneurs' relational embeddedness and their knowledge-sharing modes.It reveals that social entrepreneurs are embedded in their stakeholders' relationships, so that sharing spaces (physical, virtual, and cognitive) operate concurrently with tacit and explicit knowledge to create innovative tools and new managerial practices.The research underlines the key role of sharing spaces, especially cognitive and virtual, in creating social value.