Stage-specific resource configurations in the rural entrepreneurial ecosystem for social enterprises—a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis

Abstract Social enterprises in rural regions are organisations that pursue social objectives by developing innovative solutions to local societal challenges. To reveal their entrepreneurial ventures, a resource perspective from the entrepreneurial ecosystem is applied. Yet, it is not clear which resource configurations are critical for social entrepreneurship across the development stages. This paper takes 19 social enterprises in rural Germany and Austria, conducts interviews with entrepreneurs, and uses fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to interpret the combined effects of the interactions among resource components. The results address the causality in the social entrepreneurial ecosystem and identify pathways of success in social business stages. Based on this, this paper proposes policy suggestions tailored to the distinct resource configurations of each entrepreneurial stage.