Social entrepreneurship and sustainable technologies: Impact on communities, social innovation, and inclusive development

Social entrepreneurship (SE) is emerging as a transformative force for sustainable development, particularly in contexts marked by inequality, informality, and institutional gaps. This study adopts an integrative and critical approach to examine how SE aligns with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and contributes to inclusive, resilient, and innovation-driven change. It addresses key research gaps—fragmented theoretical applications, limited sectoral analysis, and weak methodological generalizability—by synthesizing six foundational theories: behavioral decision theory, theory of planned behavior, social cognitive theory, institutional theory, social capital theory, and grounded theory. A systematic literature review was conducted using the PRISMA protocol to ensure rigor and transparency in selecting studies from 2015 to 2024. The review identifies thematic gaps in existing literature, including underexplored areas such as sector-specific financing, digital innovation, entrepreneurship in emerging sectors, sustainable technology adoption, and the contextual embedding of SE within SDG-linked outcomes. Using the theory-context-characteristics-methods (TCCM) framework and machine learning-based BERTopic modeling, this study analyzes SE research to offer both conceptual depth and empirical mapping. Its originality lies in the interdisciplinary integration of theory with advanced text analytics to uncover actionable, theory-driven insights into SE–SDG alignment. Findings reveal SEs’ contributions to SDGs 4, 8, and 9 through inclusive models and digital tools such as AI and blockchain. SE also advances SDGs 10, 11, and 12 while being enabled by institutions (SDG 16) and partnerships (SDG 17). The study calls for multilevel theoretical integration across cognitive, relational, and institutional domains, with managerial implications for hybrid model design, stakeholder collaboration, and digital capability building.