Giraldo (9) offered the ‘option’ of a decolonial feminist lens, which invites scholars to challenge coloniality and the politics of knowledge that privilege English-language-dominated academia. A decolonial lens offers the option of broadening the conversation about colonialism to include discourse about modernity- the “visible side of coloniality” [(9), 160]. Coloniality refers to the power dynamics that long outlived colonialism (the act of colonizing) (10). qualified this notion of coloniality by describing a decolonial lens as a project that aims to make visible and undo the power dynamics of ‘epi-coloniality’ at work. Epi-coloniality describes the pervasiveness of colonialism that goes beyond systems to impact the power differentials in social hierarchies like race, class, and gender (also known as the ‘coloniality of gender.’ A decolonial project centers the voices of the colonized; makes them the primary audience; and prioritizes praxis, liberation, and justice as the outcomes of said project. In addition, Giraldo (9) emphasizes the insertion of a decolonial ‘feminist’ framework. They (ibid.) argue that this perspective was often forgotten in colonial theory and erased by modernity (which privileged Western European and North American feminism). A decolonial feminist sensibility invited a nuanced conversation that explores power dynamics across and at the intersections of race, gender, class, and culture. A decolonial feminist lens also prioritized praxis, solidarity, and community (11). According to (12) the difference between postcolonial feminism and decolonial feminism was that the latter addressed the influence of politics and governance on gendered lives, while the former assessed knowledge generated from allowing the voice and representation of females. This paper sought literature that accomplished the decolonial objectives.

Entrepreneurship is the act of creating a business with the goal of profit-making while assuming all the risk and uncertainty of the business failing (26). This definition of entrepreneurship varies from scholar to scholar. Therefore, it provides an amorphous foundation from which to define social entrepreneurship and (by extension) social entrepreneurship in sport. The main distinguishing factor between social and traditional entrepreneurship is the focus on a social mission (27). The most referenced definition of social entrepreneurship comes from (28). They (ibid.) describe social entrepreneurship as taking on a social mission, identifying opportunities to fulfill this social mission, creating value for the mission, and applying business principles to the innovative use of limited resources. Social missions begin by identifying a social problem. Social problems tend to be persistent issues requiring long-term and sustainable solutions (27). To ensure sustainability, social enterprises perform revenue-generating activities, whereby the profits are used to further the social mission and sustain the enterprise (29).

As the name suggests, the only difference between social entrepreneurship in sport and social entrepreneurship (described above) is the addition of sport as the core industry, service, or product. The enterprise’s social mission is delivered directly through the sports activity (e.g., using a rugby program to keep out-of-school children off the streets) or as the main product/service, with sport being an auxiliary element of the programming (1). An example of the latter would be an enterprise like Alive and Kicking, which produces and sells soccer balls, but the organization also delivers free sexual reproduction education curricula to schools (30).

Previously, Dees reserved the definition of social entrepreneurship for non-profit organizations only. However, the profit potential of social enterprises has gained the attention of the for-profit business sector, resulting in the corporate adoption of social causes. The rise of the socially conscious consumer has incentivized private entities to apply cause marketing and adopt strategic social activities. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a corporate management strategy that allocates a budget to meet its stakeholders’ social or environmental interests (31). Therefore, CSR is exempt from the limited resources and bricolage characterizing traditional entrepreneurship. Unlike social entrepreneurship, CSR does not need to be guided by the values of the community; instead, it honors the desires of the shareholders (32). This distinction between CSR and social entrepreneurship was necessary for the decision to exclude CSR literature from this integrated review.

SFD refers to programs that use sport to achieve social and economic development outcomes, e.g., engaging at-risk youth; promoting peace and conflict resolution; sex and reproductive education; social entrepreneurship, and many more (33). Indeed, social entrepreneurship can be an alternative to as well as an outcome of SFD. Whereas SFD programs may get most of their funding from external donors, social enterprises primarily fund their operations by generating revenues as part of their entrepreneurial activities. This difference in funding models is why some scholars promote SES over SFD (34), as it provides a more sustainable option for development. SES was distinguished from SFD for this integrated review because it uses entrepreneurial activities for revenue generation, program sustainability, and fulfilling the social mission.

I, the principal researcher in this integrated review, identify as a Black female academic from a former British colony in Africa. I am an insider (albeit in an essentialized manner) to the community of those who suffer from the sentence of colonial history (35). However, my position as an academic in North America complicates this connection to colonized communities. My academic qualifications are situated in Eurocentric logic and privilege Global North knowledge systems. The colonial system that governs my academic accomplishments creates a disconnect between me and the indigenous knowledge systems of other(ed) communities. I, therefore, identify as an ‘insider-outsider’ to communities in peripheral countries. The North American knowledge system presents those versed in it (i.e., conducting scientific research methods and presenting it as objective knowledge) as experts and authorities in their field of study. However, I found it hard to erase the decades of knowledge I had acquired from my community, elders, culture, and spirituality. This knowledge is too palpable and relevant to my lived experience for academia to ignore. Therefore, I also identify as an ‘Outsider-within’ the Global North knowledge system (36). More accurately, I identify as an Insider-Outsider-Within. The principal researcher is interested in identifying literature that amplifies alternative perspectives on SES that affirm those of my own other(ed) community. As a female, I am particularly interested in scholarly work that challenges coloniality in academia and gender by demonstrating critical reflexivity in combination with a decolonial feminist lens.

We used Covidence software to upload database searches and perform an integrative review of SES literature from a peripheral country context. An integrative review methodology analyses theoretical and empirical research, thus allowing for a broad review of primary works of literature. This flexibility is essential where there is a dearth of literature on a topic. An integrative review is used for a multiplicity of purposes, like defining concepts and reviewing theories and methodologies. By including a multiplicity of sample frames, an integrative review increases the possibility of capturing “the complexity of varied perspectives” that could contribute to the comprehensive development of SES theory [(37), 663]. The integrative review followed the principles of (38) methodology. The critical considerations for this methodology involved developing a data analysis strategy that outlined what information was relevant and irrelevant for data extraction. We made sure to explicitly define the purpose of the research, the terminologies and concepts, and the steps for analysis.

We met several times before the data collection began. We discussed the existing phenomena relevant to the intersection of sport and social entrepreneurship. We concluded that critique on sport for development has increased (33, 39, 40). We found there was also an increase in scholarly discourse on the institutionalization of corporate social responsibility in sport (41, 42), sport philanthropy (43–45), and socially responsible athletes (46–52). These concepts often included a component of social entrepreneurship. This existing discourse was the rationale for the previous section that outlined the difference between entrepreneurship, CSR, SFD, and social entrepreneurship. This step narrowed the literature search and clarified the inclusion and exclusion criteria.

In all three concepts of community, ‘community’ was prioritized over revenue generation. The community was responsible for developing, investing, and making the enterprise successful. The community determined whether the innovation had social value. The local entrepreneur built a rapport with the community and leveraged this connection to get them to buy into the solution. Therefore, the enterprise’s success depended on the community’s acceptance of and interest in the enterprise. Community enterprises are organizations that innovate products or services to meet the social needs of whole communities (62). Community enterprises “typically attempt to stimulate social and cultural life, increase business development, and strengthen community identity with the aim of building community resilience” (ibid. p. 2). However, this definition was used with caution, as it is derived from a Eurocentric context, where depopulation was often the impetus of social entrepreneurship (62).

Hayhurst (60) cited King (63) to describe GSCR as relationships between corporations’ social strategies and the community. Hayhurst’s (40, 60, 61) papers were not excluded because they centered on the community and the entrepreneurial desires and demands of the community over the corporations’ goals (22). paper on the “Girl Effect” amplified the experiences of the enterprise, the participants, and the community over that of transnational corporations. Admittedly, excluding other literature that mentioned CSR (during phase one) may have prevented the researchers from finding more articles that emphasized the community and community-run programs instead of the corporate’s interests. However, engaging in such exploration would have adjusted the scope of this review.

The term’ social innovation’ was included in the literature search as a synonym for social entrepreneurship. According to (64), social entrepreneurship—setting communal strategies and promoting social change—provides the mechanism for social innovation. Much like ‘community enterprises,’ the value of the innovation and, subsequently, the success of the innovation is determined by the invested interest of the community.

These articles on social innovation were selected for the review because they describe innovation as a tool for entrepreneurship that meets a social need (65, 66) introduced social inclusion in sport as a social innovation that creates value by bringing about social awareness and social understanding about marginalized populations. Social inclusion moves the economy forward by “serving a new market” (28, 67). This contribution broadens the scope of social entrepreneurship. Therefore, scholars can define a social enterprise as an enterprise that finds innovative ways to deepen the inclusion of historically marginalized populations (i.e., inclusion in decision-making, product/service design, and other operational or functional aspects of the organization). This connection between ‘innovation’ and ‘inclusion’ in sport is further validated by González-Serrano et al. (68) bibliometric analysis of sport literature. The analysis found that the keywords ’social innovation’ and ‘entrepreneurship in sports’ appeared as a prominent cluster in the literature (p 19). The concepts have developed into a distinct field of study in sport. Within this field, the concept of ’Sports Innovation for Inclusion’ was sighted the most.

There are two examples (n = 2) of literature borne in a local context that linked social innovation (in the form of social inclusion) to entrepreneurship in sport. First (66), use context-specific literature to develop meanings for social innovation. They applied a case study of a local Brazilian athlete from a marginalized community who became a social innovator by targeting people from similar backgrounds as beneficiaries of his social enterprise. Secondly (61, 69), explain how the social inclusion of women can bring about social change and economic growth. They explored contexts where locals pursued economic independence by challenging the gendered use and perceptions of bicycles (61). had an encultured researcher, the team, who used their familiarity with the context to assign meaning to the local perceptions about bicycles. The encultured researcher also provided a colloquial context to how positive deviance from the gendered use of bicycles fostered inclusivity for women and girls. These examples, from a Global South perspective, help to develop more comprehensive concepts in sport scholarship that encompass a plurality of lived experiences and cultures. In this case, social inclusion was centered as an approach for SES.

Feminist researchers in management studies have called for research that explores nuanced and gendered ways of creating social value (i.e., enterprising) (57). Ljunggren and Sundin (70) invited scholars to look for innovation that stems from the microphenomena experienced by marginalized communities, mainly how value was created and quantified outside of capitalist economic imperatives (23). encourage scholars to view decolonial feminism as a critical lens for sense-making rather than a theory or methodology. In doing so, scholars were invited to look at gendered power relations as more than just female oppression and male power. Instead, a feminist lens requests that researchers critically assess whose voices were being centered and whose were being pushed to the peripheries. Hayhurst’s work was the only work in this selection of articles (n = 3) that explicitly applies this decolonial feminist lens to center alternative perspectives.

The work on bike-sharing and bicycle for development (BFD) of (61) features prominently in this review (n = 3). This work straddles the lines of entrepreneurship and sport for development but also offers some of the only works that engage in feminist decolonial perspectives of SES.

These studies (n = 6) did not provide enough detail on the nuances of gender in a peripheral country context, nor did they assess gendered leadership in SES. Only three studies—all authored by (22, 60, 71)—centered the female perspective by introducing the female voice using decolonial-feminist methodologies. Despite including the female perspective, Hayhurst (ibid) only explored women participating in SES programs; no studies focused on SES that were women-led. Her research introduced interpretations of the word ‘empowerment’ and the concept of ‘entrepreneur as a sole hero’ that questioned the dominant language used to describe social entrepreneurship (34, 40). Without the voices and perspectives of women from the Global South, the masculine and Eurocentric dominance in entrepreneurship and the fallacy of universal feminism (11, 40) remains unchallenged and threatens to perpetuate academia’s erasure and oppression of women in the Global South. Female voices of the ’subaltern’ often challenge the discourse of modernity (72).

New interpretations, based on peripheral country logic, could also challenge the entrepreneurial criterion and characteristics used to identify enterprises and entrepreneurs (respectively). By homing in on the gendered component, This research added to the call for gendered perspectives in sport scholarship and knowledge production (22, 57, 67, 73).

Authors of studies in a peripheral country context used various qualitative methods of inquiry to explore the concept of SES. The two papers that employed a quantitative questionnaire were from a semi-peripheral country context, specifically a Croatian or Portuguese context. These studies used a broad-based/universal understanding of social entrepreneurship; they quantified the phenomenon rather than exploring the concepts in SES. An objective of this paper was to determine whether alternative perspectives were included in the development of the concept of SES. We argued that critical decolonial feminist thought provided an exploratory framework that grounded theory and concepts in alternative perspectives. To determine whether a decolonial feminist lens was applied, the literature was analyzed for the use of critical approaches. The section below discusses five critical approaches of decolonial feminist work and how the articles employed them.

“Where the research grows from and who funds it matters as much as if not more than the kinds of research methods/strategies used or the theoretical frameworks that inform such work” (72, 80). This quote captures the principle of geographical context within decolonial feminist work. It recognizes that geopolitical lines that favor the Global North are embedded in the politics of knowledge. The encultured scholars did not consider an overt decolonial lens that aimed to de-center Eurocentric knowledge.

Encultured researchers may not feel equipped to conduct decolonial research. Perhaps decolonization was not at the forefront of their academic agenda. Perhaps they do not grapple with racial and neocolonial power dynamics like their White counterparts and thus exercise less reflexivity. Perhaps at this stage, getting work from a peripheral perspective published was the first and most significant battle; the luxury of taking seemingly less rigorous approaches to research may be too much of a risk for scholars who need publication to advance their careers.