Social enterprises viewed as viable from societal perspectives are often regarded differently from traditional business perspectives. To examine this difference, we undertook two empirical studies of risk tolerance and legitimacy perceptions among observers of social enterprise and for-profit ventures. In Study 1, participants ( n = 115) drawn randomly from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, an online crowdsourcing marketplace for human intelligence tasks, examined two hypothetical cases and completed the risk tolerance scale of the Jackson Personality Inventory . Results show that social enterprises were seen as having lower industry legitimacy, especially by individuals with lower risk tolerance. Here, industry legitimacy mediated the effect of venture purpose on cognitive legitimacy. In Study 2, practicing entrepreneurs ( n = 23) narratively interpreted Study 1 results from social enterprise and traditional business perspectives. Both studies demonstrate that social enterprise legitimacy evaluations vary based on risk tolerance and the type of legitimacy in question. Overall findings show that explicit observations of risk tolerance effects, and multidimensional conceptualizations of legitimacy, are important to accurate evaluations of social enterprises.
Contents
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Requires Authentication UnlicensedRisk Tolerance, Legitimacy, and Perspective: Navigating Biases in Social Enterprise EvaluationsLicensedFebruary 20, 2019
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Requires Authentication UnlicensedA Multilevel Examination of Entrepreneurial Orientation and Corporate Entrepreneurship: the Joint Impact of Unit-Level Social Capital and Firm-Level Transformational LeadershipLicensedFebruary 14, 2019
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Requires Authentication UnlicensedHow do Institutions Inspire Ambitions? Differentiating Institutional Effects on Entrepreneurial Growth Intentions: Evidence from ChinaLicensedFebruary 14, 2019
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Requires Authentication UnlicensedModerating Effect of Environmental Dynamism on the Relationship between a Firm’s Entrepreneurial Orientation and Financial PerformanceLicensedNovember 28, 2018
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Requires Authentication UnlicensedThe Determinants of Entrepreneurship at the Country Level: A Panel Data ApproachLicensedOctober 26, 2018