A longitudinal comparison of capital structure between young for-profit social and commercial enterprises

Ana Cristina O. Siqueira, Nadja Guenster, Tom Vanacker and Saskia Crucke

Journal of Business Venturing, 2018, vol. 33, issue 2, 225-240

Abstract: We develop a new perspective on capital structure differences between for-profit social and commercial enterprises by combining imprinting and social entrepreneurship theory. Using a longitudinal matched sample, we find that for-profit social enterprises have 40% to 13% lower leverage and up to four times greater leverage stability over time than commercial enterprises. Our results suggest that these differences in capital structure derive from the process of prosocial organizing, which goes beyond the primary focus on financial preferences. Thus, for-profit social enterprises—and similar hybrid organizations, such as B corporations—may require theories adjusted to their context.

Keywords: Social entrepreneurship; Capital structure; Imprinting; For-profit social enterprises (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883902616303330
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbvent:v:33:y:2018:i:2:p:225-240

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2017.12.006

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Venturing is currently edited by S. Venkataraman

More articles in Journal of Business Venturing from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().