Abstract
Social entrepreneurship orientation (SEO) is a behavioral construct of social entrepreneurship (SE); therefore, we examined the influence of SEO of the organization on social and financial performance. A random sample of 810 employees was drawn from social enterprises of Pakistan during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although increasing research focuses on SE, the discipline continues to disintegrate, and this has led to appeals for a careful investigation of the associations of firms’ SE. In the recent decade, “social entrepreneurship” has earned its importance as a segment of entrepreneurship. Instead of mixed activity, firms are more likely to engage in either for-profit or non-profit activities. The causes for and consequences of this conduct has been mainly studied using objective measures of SEO, social performance, and financial performance, with little attention paid to the subjective experiences of social enterprises. We rely on the theory of stakeholder and mixed structuring to postulate that social performance intermediates the SEO-financial performance relation. By assessing a sample of 810 employees from active enterprises, we discover that social performance mediates positively and partially between SEO and financial performance, and both direct and indirect paths are in the same direction and significant. Our findings exhibit that social performance variance explained 74% of the mediating role, and the remaining 26% of the effect is because of SEO. We consider the functions by which an SEO influences enterprise performance and delivers more prominent understanding into multiple spectrums of performance. We discuss the prospective suggestions of our research and foster an encouraging pathway for more enquiry on the SEO paradigm. The study adds contribution to the literature, which has not been testified before on hybrid firms. SEO is a newly defined construct and requires more prospective research. This research gives the researchers/scholars new directions to address related disciplines and further explore this domain.
Highlights
Social entrepreneurship (SE) is awakening in interest and its literature is rapidly growing (Halberstadt and Kraus, 2016; Semrau et al, 2016; Sassmannshausen and Volkmann, 2018; Sutter et al, 2019)
social entrepreneurship orientation (SEO) is an entrepreneurial action that develops in a “hybrid” nature within enterprises because social value creation occurs via market-oriented techniques (Miller et al, 2012)
The findings advocate that the relationship between SEO and financial performance is objectively positively intervened by the social performance so that social performance surely mediates the relation between SEO and financial performance
Summary
Social entrepreneurship (SE) is awakening in interest and its literature is rapidly growing (Halberstadt and Kraus, 2016; Semrau et al, 2016; Sassmannshausen and Volkmann, 2018; Sutter et al, 2019). Scholars have hypothesized that companies mainly fulfill any of two purposes, one social or economic purpose (two pure forms that compete in a hybrid society) (Pache and Santos, 2013), and have paid attention to the balances between society and the economy preferences. These assumed balances could interrupt the provision of resources (Smith et al, 2013) and reduce the company’s competence (Fiol et al, 2009). We propose that SEO settles the hybrid balances (tensions) of social value formation and the acquisition of economic value and permits companies to respond to social and economic issues within society and in so doing and social and economic goals become harmonizing instead contending (Tobias et al, 2013)
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