City of ‘social saints’: the role of place in driving impact entrepreneurship in Turin, Italy
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City of social saints the role of place in driving impact entrepreneurship in Turin Italy.pdf
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1.22 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
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Author(s)
Burke, Mary Kathleen
Sydow, Alisa
Torchia, Daniel
Corazza, Laura
Date Issued
September 15, 2025
Journal
Entrepreneurship & Regional Development
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Citation
Burke, M. K., Sydow, A., Torchia, D., & Corazza, L. (2026). City of ‘social saints’: the role of place in driving impact entrepreneurship in Turin, Italy. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 38(1–2), 18–44.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
This paper theorizes impact entrepreneurship (IE) in relation to place by examining dynamics at the individual, community, and organizational levels. While existing IE literature emphasizes entrepreneurship aimed at addressing grand challenges, it often adopts an aggregate view that overlooks how locally embedded entrepreneurs access and mobilize social and economic resources. We introduce a novel, multidimensional framework to show how sense of place, community embeddedness and IE interrelate to shape approaches to current social/environmental challenges. Adopting a qualitative approach, this paper investigates how different actors in Turin, Italy, contribute to IE through building on a legacy of social sector institutions. We find that individuals identifying with a place-based vocation of social impact find communities with a shared volition to work together and across organizations. We contribute to understanding how individuals’ senses of place can be leveraged into wider community efforts to support IE in the region. The paper advances the IE concept to account for the individual perspectives influencing local organizing practices and visions for IE rooted in place.
MIT Department
MIT Open Learning
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1080/08985626.2025.2560072
