Imprinting Perspective on the Sustainability of Commitments to Competing Institutional Logics of Social Enterprises

Tae Jun Bae and James O. Fiet
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Tae Jun Bae: Department of Entrepreneurship, Hanyang University, 222, Wangsimni-ro, Seongdong-gu, Seoul 04763, Korea
James O. Fiet: College of Business, University of Louisville, 2301 S 3rd St., Louisville, KY 40208, USA

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 4, 1-27

Abstract: This study examines the conditions under which dual commitments to competing institutional logics, particularly a social vs. a commercial logic, are both important to organizational functioning for social enterprises. Using hand-collected data from a survey of 190 social enterprises in South Korea, we identify a reliable measure for the sustainability of competing logics. We also identify the factors associated with variation in a social enterprise’s capacity to sustain dual commitments to competing institutional logics. Using an imprinting perspective, we show that a social entrepreneur’s non-profit experience has a curvilinear effect on the sustainability of competing logics. Moreover, the non-linear effect of a social entrepreneur’s non-profit experience on the sustainability of competing logics is less profound in social enterprises with a highly ambivalent founder.

Keywords: social entrepreneurship; competing institutional logics; imprinting perspective; non-profit experience; ambivalent interpretation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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