Using Social Media for Opportunity Exploration in Social Entrepreneurial Ventures

We use an exploratory research design involving multiple case studies in South Korea to explain how the use of social media facilitate opportunity exploration and exploitation in social entrepreneurial ventures. This study advances research on social media by proposing a novel categorisation of social media use in social entrepreneurial ventures for exchanging resources with external stakeholders. Specifically, we found that social media is used by social entrepreneurial ventures for the inbound transfer of resources through scanning, sourcing and acquiring as well as the outbound transfer of resources through revealing, signalling, selling and disseminating. Lastly, our findings also unveil some challenges for SEVs to use SM, understanding of which offer significant practical implications.