Exploring the multi-level processes of legitimacy in transnational social enterprises

Daniela Bolzani, Selenia Marabello and Benson Honig

Journal of Business Venturing, 2020, vol. 35, issue 3

Abstract: Transnational entrepreneurship has emerged as a form of migrants' participation in the social, economic, and political lives of both their countries of origin and of residence. Leveraging increasing evidence about migrants' involvment in transnational social enterprises, we examine the multi-level processes through which organizational legitimacy is molded by transnational entrepreneurs to reflect country-level institutional settings, and how organizational-level legitimacy affects entrepreneurs' social status. We longitudinally examine the multi-level processes of legitimation in a transnational social enterprise operated by Ghanaian migrants across Italy and Ghana. We analyze secondary and ethnographic data for two years, observing how transnational social enterprises harvest moral and pragmatic legitimacy from the institutional contexts in which they operate. We study how entrepreneurs construe their social status through pragmatic legitimacy obtained from their transnational ventures, and their institutional environments inspired by micro- and meso legitimacy reconfigurations. We discuss theoretical implications for social and transnational entrepreneurship and practical contributions for policy-making.

Keywords: Legitimacy; Entrepreneurship; Social entrepreneurship; Transnational entrepreneurship; Migrants; Ethnography; Ghana; Italy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883902617301829
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:35:y:2020:i:3:s0883902617301829

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2019.06.002

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 ().