Moderating Effect of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Institutional Forces and Venture Philanthropy

Abstract

Linking the new institutionalism to entrepreneurial orientation (EO), this study examines factors shaping behaviors of social entrepreneurship funders called social investment funders (SIFs). Institutional and entrepreneurial forces are investigated as main and interactive effects upon their venture philanthropy practices. Data collected from 146 organizations are scrutinized by moderated multiple regressions coupled with multiple imputations, diagnostic analyses, and post hoc analyses. The study confirms that both EO and institutional forces enhance SIFs’ venture philanthropy practices, and that EO enables SIFs to resist regulative forces of traditional philanthropy and engage in venture philanthropy practices. As such, this appears to be the first effort to theorize and test EO as a micro-level condition enabling institutional entrepreneurship, contributing to scholarly efforts by the “agency camp” of the new institutionalism (Oliver) and EO (Miller)