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| Social Entrepreneurship Orientation, Boundary-spanning Search, and Social Enterprise Performance: the Moderating Role of Market Environment |
| Li Shanshan1,Huang Qunhui2 |
| (1. Department of Industrial Economics, University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 102488, China; 2. Institute of Economics,Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 100836, China) |
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Abstract With the rapid growth of the global economy, various social problems such as poverty gap, endowment and pollution control have promoted the rise of social entrepreneurship. Compared with commercial enterprises, social enterprises lay more emphasis on creating social value. While compared with charitable organizations or non-profit organizations, social enterprises have the function to create economic value which can be used to subsidize charitable donations and government subsidies. Therefore, social enterprises, driven by a mixture of social and economic benefits, play an important role in solving social dilemmas, breaking welfare impasse, and promoting sustainable development, thereby establishing a new model that combines creating wealth, providing social welfare and improving environment. Thus, as a new organization form that embeds social responsibilities into business model, social enterprises have attracted more and more scholars' attention. Many theoretical discussions are delivered, but most of them are descriptive explorations with phenomenon-driven cores, leading to the cumulative debris of existing research conclusions. The contradiction between pursuing economic benefits and social value makes social enterprises often fall into mission drift. SEO, a key factor for social entrepreneurship, reflecting the tendency to integrate economic and social benefits in entrepreneurial activities, can promote enterprises to take into account both economic and social performance and achieve the overall consideration. Yet, this view has so far not sufficiently been empirically supported. In addition, boundary-spanning search, a concept from organizational search theory, enables social enterprises to obtain resources in different value chain networks. Thus, it provides useful idea to break resource constraints and search for diversified and heterogeneous resources to reconcile paradox and balance ambidextrous performance. Furthermore, the technological turbulence and demand uncertainty of market environment will inevitably affect social enterprises' strategic decision because they are naturally embedded in the context of market. Yet, to date, direct empirical examinations of this important theoretical assumption remain absent.#br#Taken collectively, this study aims to uncover the influencing mechanism of SEO on social enterprise economic and social performance through boundary-spanning search, and examine the moderating role of market environment in the path mentioned above drawing on organizational search theory. Using the data of 200 social enterprises in eastern China, the results demonstrate that: (1) SEO has a positive impact on social enterprise economic performance and social performance. (2) Boundary-spanning search plays a partial mediating role between SEO and two types of social enterprise performance. (3) Market environment, as a key external environmental factor, positively moderates the relationship between SEO and boundary-spanning search and the relationship between boundary-spanning search and social enterprise economic performance, but negatively moderates the relationship between boundary-spanning search and social performance.#br#This study makes two theoretical contributions. On the one hand, based on the organizational search theory and "attitude-behavior-outcome" framework, the theoretical model of SEO on social enterprise performance in our study reveals the specific influencing mechanism. Thus, this study enriches the empirical literature on social enterprise performance and makes up for the lack of mechanism research. The contradiction between economic growth and social benefits and how to achieve balance have always perplexed scholars. The current study not only confirms the positive effect of SEO on social enterprise performance but also further explores the specific influencing mechanism. In addition, we introduce the concept of boundary-spanning search which is applicable to commercial enterprises and social enterprises. We also explore and reveal the process that SEO' dual logic tendency helps to achieve ambidextrous performance by facilitating boundary-spanning search to fulfill the dual logic needs for heterogeneous knowledge. As such, the current study introduces boundary-spanning search into social enterprises, which provides a new idea to understand the relationship between SEO on social enterprise performance. On the other hand, most previous studies tend to discuss the moderating effect of market environment directly, and thus few empirical tests have focused on the differentiated roles and performance of market environment in the different effect paths. As an important external contextual factor, we examine and confirm that market environment can positively moderate the relationship between SEO and boundary-spanning search, positively moderate relationship between boundary-spanning search and economic performance, but negatively moderate the relationship between boundary-spanning search and social performance. It helps to understand the strategic choices and the acquisition and utilization of ambidextrous resources of social enterprises in the context of the market environment by integrating SEO, boundary-spanning search, market environment, and social enterprise performance into one conceptual model . In addition, it also provides theoretical support and empirical evidence for social enterprises to guard against market logic aggression and adhere to value co-creation under the high market environment.#br#
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Received: 14 January 2021
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