Managing capability renewal in social enterprises: human resource roles, competence gaps and work-embedded training

Social enterprises (SEs) are hybrid organisations that pursue social impact while also remaining commercially viable. This dual purpose creates persistent tensions in resource acquisition, stakeholder alignment and business-model renewal, because these organisations must operate across social, commercial and public-sector logics (Bhardwaj et al., 2022; Ince and Hahn, 2020). These pressures are not only strategic. They also shape everyday work by changing how responsibilities are distributed, which boundary-spanning roles become necessary, and what competences managers and employees need to develop.

Dynamic capabilities theory provides a useful management lens for understanding these changes. SEs need to sense changes in their environment, seize new opportunities and reconfigure routines, roles and resources without weakening their social mission. Recent research shows that such capabilities are shaped by how managers balance attention to social and commercial goals in resource-constrained settings (Lin et al., 2025). However, the literature still offers limited guidance on how business-model renewal is translated into specific human resource (HR) roles, structures and capability demands. The first objective of this study is therefore to examine how current business-model shifts in SEs reshape HR roles, structures and capability demands.

A second issue concerns how SEs and education providers can build the competences needed for such adaptation. Effectuation emphasises action with available means, partnership formation and iterative learning under uncertainty, and has been advanced within universities as a workable logic for entrepreneurship education and collaboration with external stakeholders (Van Mensel et al., 2025). At the same time, education research highlights co-creation and open innovation as levers for building entrepreneurial competences, yet offers limited translation of effectual principles into explicit transversal and functional competence profiles for distinct SE roles, particularly where open collaboration and digital practices are expected (Ramírez-Montoya et al., 2025). The second objective is therefore to identify the transversal, functional and currently missing competences that enable effectual action and open, collaborative operating models in SEs, and to indicate the activities most affected by these gaps.

Across social entrepreneurship education, recent reviews map a fragmented field and call for stronger collaboration, ethics integration and research frameworks. They also note weak assessment practices and uneven coverage of competence domains that now include digital, green, resilience and interpersonal skills alongside entrepreneurial skills (Chen and Shabbir, 2025; Al Issa et al., 2024). Complementary syntheses in sustainable entrepreneurship education underline the centrality of experiential and work-based learning but point to the absence of shared teaching standards and the need for ecosystemic, partnership-oriented delivery. These issues complicate curricular design and evaluation across vocational education and training (VET), higher education (HE) and lifelong learning (García-González and Ramírez-Montoya, 2021; Vargas-Merino et al., 2025). Building on these gaps, the third objective is to delineate design characteristics for training offers that respond to SE needs, particularly for open/co-creation and digital practices, specifying content emphasis, delivery formats, partnership modes and assessment approaches.

Guided by these objectives, the study addresses the following research questions (RQs):

Drawing on qualitative data from HE professors, VET trainers and SE managers across Finland, Italy, Greece and Spain, the study advances three contributions. First, it extends dynamic capabilities theory with a competence-based account that links sensing, seizing and transforming to concrete HR reconfiguration in hybrid SEs, specifying how digital, green and socio-cultural capabilities bundle within everyday roles and coordination tasks (Bhardwaj et al., 2022; Ince and Hahn, 2020; Lin et al., 2025). Second, it advances effectuation theory by showing how means-driven partnering and affordable-loss pilots – operationalised through co-creation and service-learning between universities and SEs – function as training mechanisms that build the capabilities needed for business-model adaptation (García-González and Ramírez-Montoya, 2021; Van Mensel et al., 2025; Ramírez-Montoya et al., 2025). Finally, it contributes to social entrepreneurship education by proposing an integrated, measurable competence-and-training design framework that aligns digital, green, ethics/socio-cultural and resilience strands with preferred delivery formats, directly answering calls for coherent frameworks, stronger assessment and ecosystem-linked pedagogy (Chen and Shabbir, 2025; Al Issa et al., 2024; Wang and Horta, 2024).

Universities, VET and lifelong-learning providers increasingly frame social entrepreneurship education as a transdisciplinary competence domain that integrates ethical and socio-cultural formation with digital and sustainability literacies, delivered through experiential and ecosystem-linked learning (Al Issa et al., 2024; Wang and Horta, 2024). Review-based evidence from HE shows that social innovation and entrepreneurship courses vary in whether they teach about, for, through or with social entrepreneurship, while also highlighting persistent gaps in outcome assessment and the long-term sustainability of educational practices (Wang and Horta, 2024). Evidence from sustainable entrepreneurship curricula in HE business contexts reinforces the primacy of experiential learning and supportive university–ecosystem linkages, while stressing that approaches must be adapted to learner profiles and local conditions rather than follow a single model (Vargas-Merino et al., 2025). Competency-oriented studies, including empirical work on ethics education and social entrepreneurship competence, further argue for multidisciplinary formation that moves beyond business-as-usual and foregrounds ethical and humanistic development as core to the social entrepreneurship profile (Sharifi and Khoshnevisan, 2025; Vázquez-Parra et al., 2022).

Across this literature, three strands recur and increasingly converge in programme design: (1) socio-cultural and ethical competence (leadership, civic responsibility, cultural awareness, human-rights sensibilities), (2) digital competence (data use, platform collaboration, technology-enabled co-creation) and (3) sustainability competence (green and circular skills aligned with the sustainable development goals). Integration and assessment of these strands remain uneven, prompting calls for clearer measurement frameworks and stronger links between curriculum and demonstrated competence gains across VET, HE and lifelong learning. Scholars also advocate amplifying student voice, qualitative inquiry and cross-disciplinary delivery beyond business schools to capture how pedagogy shapes perceived and actual competence development. This is especially relevant because recent intervention-based studies in HE show that social entrepreneurship training can affect innovation, leadership, personal and social-value competences, but also requires appropriate tools for evaluating these outcomes (García-González and Ramírez-Montoya, 2021; Al Issa et al., 2024; Ramírez-Montoya et al., 2025; Vargas-Merino et al., 2025; Vázquez-Parra et al., 2022; Wang and Horta, 2024).

Dynamic capabilities provide an organising logic for how SEs sense external shifts, seize opportunities through resource reconfiguration and transform routines under hybrid social–commercial missions. Existing dynamic-capability studies in SEs come from different empirical and review contexts. Case-based work in emerging-economy SEs identifies micro-foundations such as beneficiary involvement, distinctive business models and selective supplier relationships (Bhardwaj et al., 2022). Qualitative evidence from German SEs shows how stakeholder communication, selective signalling and collaborator integration support survivability (Ince and Hahn, 2020). Survey evidence from Taiwanese SEs further shows how managerial attention to social and commercial goals shapes dynamic capabilities under dual-goal tensions (Lin et al., 2025). Taken together, these studies show that sensing increasingly targets digitalisation, open collaboration and green regulation; seizing involves role redesign, competence development and partnership architectures that support mission alignment and revenue resilience; and transformation requires continuous learning mechanisms and HR systems that stabilise new practices without diluting social purpose.

Despite this progress, the literature under-specifies how HR and competence architectures operate as vehicles for building and renewing capabilities. Reviews and meta-syntheses call for moving beyond macro-strategic treatments to trace how training, role transitions and job redesign operationalise capability development at the micro level, particularly under resource constraints and mission tensions (Bhardwaj and Srivastava, 2024). There is limited integration between capability cycles and the concrete digital, green and socio-cultural skill portfolios required as business models evolve, leaving a practical gap in aligning sensing–seizing–transforming with systematic upskilling pathways across roles (Bhardwaj et al., 2022; Ince and Hahn, 2020; Lin et al., 2025).

Effectuation emphasises action with available means, affordable loss, partnership formation and leveraging contingencies. In university and HE ecosystems, educators and support structures mobilise these logics through partnerships, open labs and iterative project cycles that enable rapid co-creation with community actors, mirroring how SEs evolve under uncertainty. Recent empirical work on universities in different institutional settings shows that university support for social entrepreneurs can follow embedded, auxiliary, opportunity-driven or boundary-spanning logics, depending on institutional capacity and stakeholder engagement (Van Mensel et al., 2025). Studies of co-creation in social entrepreneurship education position HE as a catalytic node connecting learners, SEs and support infrastructures, with learner–stakeholder collaboration linked to autonomy, motivation and ecosystem engagement (Ramírez-Montoya et al., 2025). However, effectuation is rarely translated into role-specific competence frameworks in SEs or into assessment models that capture gains across VET, HE and lifelong learning. Reviews highlight scattered evidence on how effectual principles map to curriculum and outcomes, underscoring the need to connect classroom co-creation with capability building in partner SEs (Al Issa et al., 2024; Wang and Horta, 2024).

Viewed together, these literature point to a coherent yet under-implemented agenda. Dynamic capabilities foreground sensing, seizing and transforming under dual social–commercial logics; social entrepreneurship education calls for integrated transversal, digital and sustainability competences; and effectuation offers an action logic already used in university partnerships. The reviewed studies also come from varied contexts, including HE reviews, university-based interventions, European university ecosystems, emerging-economy cases, German SEs and Taiwanese SEs. What remains missing is a grounded account of how business-model change in SEs translates into HR configurations and competence gaps, and how education ecosystems can support capability-building across VET, HE and lifelong-learning settings (Bhardwaj et al., 2022; Al Issa et al., 2024; Van Mensel et al., 2025; Vargas-Merino et al., 2025; Wang and Horta, 2024).

This study examines Italy, Finland, Greece and Spain because their social economy ecosystems differ in governance and skills, shaping how business model change translates into HR roles and competence needs. First, Italy and Spain combine legal definitions, strategies and lead authorities, while Greece has a definition and lead authority but no national strategy and Finland lacks a definition and repealed its Social Enterprise Act after limited uptake (OECD/European Union, 2025). Second, multi-level governance varies from strong regional capacity in Italy and Spain to Greece's Regional Social and Solidarity Economy Unions and municipal support, whereas Finland relies on local self-government and a Centre of Expertise (OECD/European Union, 2025). Third, transformation agendas differ, with Spain's recovery projects modernising care value chains and building digital skills, while Italy's recovery plan pairs Third Sector reform with investment in territorial social services (OECD/European Union, 2025). Finally, Global Entrepreneurship Monitor evidence places Finland above the European Union (EU) average in self-reported entrepreneurial skills while Italy, Greece and Spain are below, and training guidance calls for tailored programmes that build social impact and alliance-building competences and address digital access barriers, aligning with the study's focus on missing transversal skills and HR capability gaps (OECD/European Union, 2023).

To address the study's objectives, a qualitative research design with non-probability sampling was employed. Maximum-variation purposive sampling was used to ensure heterogeneity across professional roles, countries, regions and institutional settings, complemented by convenience sampling to access eligible participants. The final sample comprised 60 participants: HE professors, VET trainers and SE managers from four EU countries.

Participants were selected for their practical experience in designing, delivering or applying courses and training related to social entrepreneurship or SEs in HE, VET, or lifelong learning. Recruitment drew on public institutional sources, training-provider directories, SE networks, professional contacts and referrals. In each country, outreach sought variation across regions and organisations differing in size, sector and institutional profile. Potential participants were then screened against the inclusion criteria before interview participation. Table 1 summarises the sample composition. The breadth and diversity of the sample, combined with repeated convergence across roles and countries, provided sufficient depth for thematic saturation and supported robust cross-case comparison rather than anecdotal illustration (Patton, 1990).

In-depth, semi-structured online interviews lasting 25–60 min were conducted, depending on participant availability and logistical considerations. Interviews were conducted in participants' native languages to preserve cultural accuracy and were subsequently transcribed and translated into English, with linguistic and cultural nuances retained during the analysis.

A semi-structured interview guide (Table A1 in  Appendix), aligned with the study's objectives, comprised open-ended questions and follow-up probes concerning SE business models, HR challenges and training needs. Formal ethics committee approval was not obtained; however, the study was conducted in accordance with applicable institutional procedures, and all participants provided informed consent and were assured confidentiality.

To enhance rigour and credibility, member checking was employed, involving the verification of findings with participants to ensure accuracy and validity. Iterative memoing during and after the interviews supported the ongoing refinement of probes and enhanced the depth of subsequent interviews. This cyclical process of data collection and reflection strengthened the credibility of the material and helped maintain close alignment between the interview corpus and the study's RQs (Maxwell, 2013).

Reflexive thematic analysis was employed to examine the qualitative data, following the six-phase approach outlined by Braun and Clarke (2022). This method was selected for its flexibility and its ability to identify, analyse and report patterns (themes) within the data, making it particularly suitable for exploring complex and context-specific issues, such as competency development in SEs. Coding and theme development were iterative, with regular movement between individual transcripts, country-specific patterns and cross-country comparisons, which helped to ensure that the final themes were both grounded in the data and analytically robust.

The analysis yielded three overarching themes, each comprising three nested subthemes. Each theme and its subthemes correspond to one RQ (i.e. overarching theme 1 addresses RQ1, and so on). Table 2 summarises these overarching themes and subthemes.

Across the sample, participants described how business-model hybridisation and cross-sector partnerships are reshaping the position of the SEs in the market and what is expected of their staff, while also generating tensions around identity and competition. Interviewees from Italy, Greece and Spain noted that social and commercial logics are increasingly intertwined. An Italian HE professor observed that:

Echoing this, a Greek SE manager reflected that:

A Spanish HE professor added a more critical note on the cultural implications of this shift:

Overall, the accounts indicate that hybridisation and alliances open important spaces for innovation, resource mobilisation and experimentation with new revenue models, but they also create risks of mission drift and erosion of long-term commitment if not critically managed and reflexively governed.

Participants also highlighted how digitalisation is enabling more open, platform-based and data-driven business models and, at the same time, reconfiguring coordination tasks inside SEs. These opportunities, however, were not described as equally accessible or strategically integrated across contexts. A Finnish HE professor explained that:

From a practitioner perspective, a Greek SE manager stressed that:

An Italian HE professor pointed out the HR implications of platform-based approaches:

These narratives reinforce that digital openness is not a purely technical add-on; it demands new relational and coordination capacities.

Participants further emphasised that a stronger sustainability and impact orientation is pushing SEs to redesign roles around impact modelling, measurement and green transitions, although the tools and capacities to do so remain uneven. A Finnish HE professor underlined the need for impact literacy, arguing for:

A Greek VET trainer linked this directly to business models:

From an Italian HE perspective, the agenda appears equally demanding:

An Italian VET trainer made the ecological transition explicit, arguing that:

Overall, while the rhetoric around impact and sustainability is strong, these accounts point to a capacity gap around robust metrics and the strategic use of those metrics in day-to-day work.

Participants consistently described transversal competences – collaboration, communication, socio-ethical sensitivity and resilience – as foundational for both managers and staff, yet also suggested that these are often treated as implicit rather than systematically developed. A SE manager in Greece emphasised that:

A Spanish VET trainer added a more explicitly ethical dimension, noting that:

In parallel, a Finnish HE professor highlighted resilience in a context of overlapping crises:

An Italian HE professor reinforced the cross-cutting nature of these capacities, referring to:

These views underscore that transversal competences are central to navigating complex environments, yet interviewees rarely mentioned structured development for them, suggesting a gap between recognition and practice.

Alongside transversal skills, participants outlined a functional competence set in digital tools, green practices and impact/finance that is increasingly expected, although often articulated in broad aspirational terms rather than as concrete, resourced learning trajectories. A Finnish VET trainer described a wide digital and analytic agenda:

An Italian HE professor linked these technical skills to strategic foresight and accounting, explaining that:

From the perspective of a Finnish SE manager, green competences are framed as both responsibility and opportunity:

While these accounts map a rich and demanding competence portfolio, participants said little about workload, access to training or trade-offs, leaving open how realistically these expectations are supported in practice.

Participants also drew attention to missing competences – particularly in languages, digital, legal and financial/technical areas – that directly constrain key activities such as fundraising, reporting, experimentation and scaling, with consequences for both innovation and sustainability. A Spanish HE professor observed that the skill gaps are not unique to the social economy but have specific implications there:

An Italian HE professor stressed the importance of more “technical” capabilities for funding and project work, stating that:

Another Spanish HE professor offered a stark assessment of the consequences:

Collectively, these narratives point to a structural skills deficit: both managers and staff juggle demanding mixes of transversal and functional competences, yet persistent gaps in digital, financial, legal and language capabilities mean that many initiatives struggle to secure funding, comply with complex regulations and scale socially innovative models in financially sustainable ways.

Across the interviews, there was a clear awareness–application gap regarding “open business”. Participants widely endorsed openness, transparency and co-creation in principle, yet described how competitive funding regimes, hybrid financial bases and trust issues make these models difficult to implement in practice. Rather than treating openness as a purely normative stance, interviewees linked it to concrete capability requirements – especially boundary-spanning, partner-facing and coordination competences. An Italian HE professor, for example, stressed that more open, platform-oriented approaches demand specific relational skill sets:

A Finnish SE manager similarly highlighted that, in practice, openness is constrained by trust dynamics and the competitive conditions under which SEs operate:

From Greece, a VET trainer connected the implementation gap to uneven infrastructure and skills readiness, explicitly pointing to training-related barriers:

These accounts underline that open business is not primarily a matter of attitude; it depends on structural conditions and capacities that remain only partially in place.

Regarding training formats, participants across contexts expressed a preference for approaches embedded in real work and peer relations – work-based and co-created projects, short targeted modules and tech-enabled delivery – while also recognising significant time and operational constraints. A Greek HE professor advocated combining work-based learning with structured reflection, arguing that:

A Finnish HE professor reinforced the need for flexibility and micro-learning:

A Finnish SE manager emphasised integration into daily operations:

These preferences highlight a desire to move beyond traditional, decontextualised courses; however, they also imply that any training design for “open/digital” competences must accommodate high workloads and limited slack time in SEs.

Finally, participants perceived current VET and HE provision for social entrepreneurship as fragmented and uneven. While multiple offers exist, these were often seen as overlooking the specificities of SEs and lacking practical and ethical integration, pointing to the need for an “integrated spine” combining digital, green and social impact dimensions with clear learning outcomes. A Finnish HE professor was explicit about gaps in VET, noting that:

In contrast, but in a complementary way, an Italian VET trainer stressed the proliferation of opportunities:

However, a Spanish SE manager drew attention to persistent shortcomings in content and interaction, arguing that:

In sum, the evidence shows that, although policy agendas and funding programmes have proliferated training offers, these opportunities frequently remain generic, fragmented and insufficiently tailored to SEs' specific business-model realities. A more coherent, practice-oriented architecture is still needed to connect open, digital and ethical competences to the day-to-day operational challenges of SEs.

In relation to RQ1, the findings show that business-model shifts embed sensing, seizing and transforming within reconfigured HR roles and structures rather than only within top-level routines. Consistent with dynamic capability theory, respondents described hybridisation, networking and stronger sustainability orientations as deliberate efforts to interpret changing institutional, digital and green environments (Bhardwaj et al., 2022). The turn to alliances, platforms and digitally enabled openness also reflects prior work identifying stakeholder communication, selective signalling and collaborator integration as core sensing–seizing capacities (Ince and Hahn, 2020). Importantly, participants portrayed these as institutionalised business-model features rather than ad hoc responses, echoing arguments that co-creation with beneficiaries, selective suppliers and distinctive models operate as micro-foundations of SE capabilities (Bhardwaj et al., 2022). The findings extend this literature by showing that transforming and reconfiguring are inscribed into HR architectures through roles focused on impact modelling, digital coordination and ecological transition. Overall, SEs are sensing market, societal, digital and green shifts through hybrid business models and alliances, while increasingly transforming HR systems into carriers of dynamic capabilities (Bhardwaj et al., 2022; Ince and Hahn, 2020; Lin et al., 2025).

In relation to RQ2, the findings identify a demanding competence architecture across SE roles. Participants highlighted dense mixes of interpersonal, digital, green and financial skills, alongside socio-cultural and basic digital competences in day-to-day interaction with beneficiaries and partners; crucially, missing skills cluster where key activities stall. Participants consistently emphasised collaboration, communication, humility, socio-ethical awareness, resilience, and cross-cultural sensitivity, yet noted that these are often treated as implicit rather than as explicit development targets. This mirrors work conceptualising social entrepreneurship competence as an integrated blend of cognitive and non-cognitive elements – leadership, teamwork, communication, ethical awareness and personal resilience – beyond technical know-how (Vázquez-Parra et al., 2022). The transversal profile identified here – interpersonal communication, intercultural empathy, tolerance of ambiguity – converges with recent sociocultural competence research that distinguishes cognitive, emotional and behavioural layers (Sharifi and Khoshnevisan, 2025). Within this architecture, responsibilities for people and time management, strategic communication and alliance orchestration sit alongside mission-driven teamwork, day-to-day problem solving and culturally sensitive interaction with beneficiaries and partners – patterns consistent with social entrepreneurship education studies differentiating leadership/coordination sub-competences from general relational skills and calling for multidisciplinary profiles with a humanistic outlook (García-González and Ramírez-Montoya, 2021; Vázquez-Parra et al., 2022). Functionally, respondents described demanding portfolios spanning digital business models, data use, business intelligence, resource planning, impact measurement, social media marketing, green skills and sustainability-oriented accounting, in line with social entrepreneurship education scholarship that couples ethical commitment with business acumen and sustainability capabilities (Chen and Shabbir, 2025; Al Issa et al., 2024). The distinctive contribution here is the localisation of deficits – languages, digital literacy, legal knowledge, accounting expertise and project-call participation – at points where fundraising, competitive bidding, reporting, experimentation and scaling falter. This moves beyond high-level lists to show how absent competences can induce replication and survival over innovation, echoing concerns about uneven integration of management and financial skills in social entrepreneurship education curricula (Chen and Shabbir, 2025; Mir Shahid and Alarifi, 2021). It also underscores the need to purposefully develop ethical and socio-cultural competences rather than leaving them to emerge informally, as mapping studies urge clearer frameworks linking transversal and functional skills to concrete tasks (Al Issa et al., 2024).

In relation to RQ3, the findings show that partnership-first implementation of open and digital practices coexists with an execution gap that targeted training can close through effectuation-aligned, ecosystem-embedded formats. Interviewees treated alliances, platforms and data practices as day-to-day coordination scaffolds yet reported barriers rooted in competitive funding, uneven digital capacity and fragile inter-organisational trust. This pattern accords with effectuation principles that prioritise available means, stakeholder commitments, affordable-loss experimentation and contingency leverage – implying training that is iterative, partner-engaged and problem-centred rather than classroom-bound (Van Mensel et al., 2025). Consistent with contemporary social entrepreneurship education reviews, effective modalities are education through and with practice: service-learning, co-creation studios with external partners and short, stackable modules that fit operational workloads while building the digital and coordination capabilities required by platform and matchmaking models (Wang and Horta, 2024). Mapping studies further call for transdisciplinary and ethically grounded designs that explicitly integrate digital and financial literacies, aligning with this study's case for an integrated spine combining digital, green and ethics with measurable outcomes (Al Issa et al., 2024). Evidence from co-creation interventions supports the value of partner-engaged, iterative formats when coupled with structured reflection and assessment, matching respondents' emphasis on peer labs and tech-enabled delivery (Ramírez-Montoya et al., 2025). Organisationally, aligning training with capability micro-foundations – open innovation, knowledge sharing, resource reconfiguration – helps translate openness intent into routines and supports new boundary-spanning HR roles that link beneficiaries and customers (Bhardwaj et al., 2022). The combined implication is that capability development for open and digital practice is most credible when delivered as iterative, assessable, effectuation-aligned learning with real partners and anchored in a transdisciplinary curriculum, while acknowledging structural constraints and institutional heterogeneity in HE and support infrastructures (Al Issa et al., 2024; Van Mensel et al., 2025; Wang and Horta, 2024).

The four-country design further clarifies how similar HR and competence pressures are shaped by different social economy contexts. Italy and Spain, where legal and strategic frameworks and regional governance are more formalised, make legal–accounting, funding and project-call competences especially salient. Greece highlights how financial constraints, uneven infrastructure and the absence of a national strategy can intensify the need for networking, digital readiness and alliance-building capabilities. Finland, despite lacking a current legal definition for SEs, points to the importance of local support structures, stronger entrepreneurial skills and flexible, work-embedded learning. Thus, while the study does not claim to offer a full comparative institutional analysis, it shows that business-model renewal, HR role change and competence gaps are shared across contexts but conditioned by national governance, skills and support environments.

Synthesising the results with extant scholarship, three theoretical contributions are advanced regarding dynamic capabilities in SEs, competence architectures in social entrepreneurship education, and effectuation-aligned capability building. First, this study foregrounds an HR-centred, operational view of dynamic capabilities in SEs. Hybridisation, platform logics and sustainability metrics translate into role redesign and boundary-spanning functions that institutionalise sensing, seizing and transforming within everyday coordination. Prior work identifies stakeholder communication, selective signalling, collaborator integration and beneficiary co-creation as micro-foundations that sustain survivability under dual social–commercial logics (Bhardwaj et al., 2022; Ince and Hahn, 2020). The present evidence adds granularity by showing that these mechanisms are embedded at the level of jobs and coordination tasks – rather than remaining episodic projects – while complementing arguments that capability strength increases when managerial attention to social and commercial goals is jointly maintained through role mandates for impact modelling, digital coordination and ecological transition (Lin et al., 2025).

Second, this study specifies a competence architecture that connects transversal and functional skills to concrete organisational tasks by showing how missing languages, legal–accounting, advanced data/impact and project-bid skills converge around activities that often falter. Mapping studies call for transdisciplinary, ethically grounded programmes that braid socio-cultural formation with digital and financial literacies, yet note uneven integration and weak assessment linkages across VET, HE and lifelong learning (Al Issa et al., 2024; Wang and Horta, 2024). The contribution lies in converting these curricular agendas into actionable capability requirements linked to concrete roles and tasks and proposing an integrated spine that couples digital, green and ethics with measurable outcomes, thereby responding to calls for clearer frameworks that link curriculum to demonstrated capability development in SE settings (Al Issa et al., 2024; Ramírez-Montoya et al., 2025; Vázquez-Parra et al., 2022).

Third, this study bridges effectuation and capability development by identifying partnership-first, iterative learning as a training micro-foundation that helps convert an awareness–application gap into capability cycles and supports new boundary roles linking beneficiaries and customers. Emerging work in university ecosystems shows greater impact when support is tailored through embedded, auxiliary, boundary-spanning or opportunity-driven configurations that leverage internal resources and external networks, rather than one-size-fits-all pedagogy (Van Mensel et al., 2025). Aligning with scoping reviews, the study specifies service-learning, co-creation studios with real partners, and short, stackable, tech-enabled modules as formats that anchor openness and digital practice in lived collaborations and day-to-day operations (Ramírez-Montoya et al., 2025; Wang and Horta, 2024). Conceptually, this reframes training as a micro-foundation of dynamic capabilities, in which ecosystem-embedded, effectuation-aligned formats function as vehicles for sensing, seizing and transforming, particularly where platform work creates boundary roles that orchestrate beneficiaries and customers (Bhardwaj et al., 2022; Van Mensel et al., 2025).

The findings translate into concrete, role-specific actions for leaders, educators, policymakers and workers in SEs. Managers should formalise boundary-spanning roles that connect beneficiaries and customers and assign clear mandates for impact modelling, digital coordination and green transition work (Bhardwaj et al., 2022; Lin et al., 2025). Day-to-day operations can also be strengthened through stakeholder communication, selective signalling and collaborator-integration routines, which prior research identifies as survivability-enhancing micro-foundations (Ince and Hahn, 2020). Addressing observed capability gaps requires targeted investment in languages, legal–accounting literacy, advanced data and impact measurement, and competitive-bid preparation.

These implications should also be considered from workers' perspective. Work-embedded and flexible training is likely to be better received when employees see its relevance to everyday tasks, such as partner coordination, digital tool use, funding applications or social and environmental impact documentation. However, new competence expectations may be experienced as additional workload if introduced without sufficient time, support or participation. Training should therefore be co-designed with workers, connected to operational problems and supported through peer learning, short applied modules and reflection.

At the programme level, universities, VET providers and SE partners should co-design short, stackable modules embedded in real projects, such as service-learning and co-creation studios, so that training occurs alongside operations while building the digital and coordination competences demanded by platform and matchmaking models (Ramírez-Montoya et al., 2025; Wang and Horta, 2024). Providers and funders should back transdisciplinary curriculum spines that explicitly couple digital, green and ethics strands and include assessment rubrics and longitudinal tracking of competence gains to remedy persistent evaluation weaknesses (Al Issa et al., 2024; Wang and Horta, 2024). Ecosystem support should follow effectuation principles, starting from available means, securing stakeholder commitments and iterating affordable-loss pilots, to translate openness intent into routinised practice (Bhardwaj et al., 2022; Van Mensel et al., 2025).

The qualitative, cross-sectional design, purposive sampling across four EU contexts and reliance on self-reported interviews limit transferability and introduce risks of selection, translation and social-desirability bias, notwithstanding the use of reflexive thematic analysis to enhance rigour (Braun and Clarke, 2022). Outcome claims were not independently verified, and competence development was not tracked longitudinally, reflecting wider concerns about short-term and uneven assessment in social entrepreneurship education.

Future research should examine how workers in SEs receive and experience the competence changes identified in this study, particularly whether work-embedded training, micro-credentials and co-creation projects are perceived as useful development opportunities or as additional work intensification. Longitudinal mixed-methods studies could link these training formats to validated competence metrics and organisational performance, advancing calls for stronger evaluation frameworks and sustained ecosystem embedding (Al Issa et al., 2024; Wang and Horta, 2024).

Further comparative and multi-actor research would also strengthen understanding of capability renewal across contexts. Comparative work beyond Europe could test how institutional heterogeneity conditions capability building, including contexts where managerial goal-attention alignment may differentially shape dynamic capabilities (Lin et al., 2025). Experimental and quasi-experimental studies within university–SE partnerships could estimate causal effects of effectuation-aligned training on openness and digital routines, while network and process analyses could trace how stakeholder communication, selective signalling and collaborator integration become routinised at the HR level (Bhardwaj et al., 2022; Ince and Hahn, 2020). Incorporating beneficiaries, frontline workers and external partners would clarify how competence portfolios translate into credible impact across diverse ecosystems (Wang and Horta, 2024).