Institutional intermediaries as legitimizing agents for social enterprise in China and India

ABSTRACT

This study conducts a comparative analysis of social enterprise intermediaries in China and India to better understand how they legitimize social enterprises in new settings. To address theoretical weakness in this sphere, it combines several institutional theories to capture disruptions created by institutional innovation and also legitimizing processes. Drawing on data collected from surveys, interviews, and websites in each country, it finds that intermediaries mitigate negative and leverage positive influences of external institutions though their strategies vary due to country differences in institutional pressures. This information is key to building intermediaries’ capacity to institutionalize social enterprises as new institutional actors.

KEYWORDS:

• Social enterprise
• intermediaries
• institutionalization
• legitimacy
• China
• India

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. There is a growing literature around the conflicting non-profit and market logics found in SEs (Cooney 2006; Battilana and Dorado 2010; Garrow and Hasenfeld 2012; Pache and Santos 2013).

2. The legal form of Social Welfare Enterprise was phased out in 2016 in China (Ye 2020).

3. Terms included ‘social entrepreneurship’, ‘social venture’, ‘impact enterprise’, ‘inclusive business’, ‘social entrepreneur’, ‘base of the pyramid’, ‘social business’, ‘impact investing’, ‘venture philanthropy’, ‘social finance’, ‘impact fund’.

4. Interviews of intermediaries in China were not conducted because data collection for China, and the funding for it, had already ended by the time we realized the importance of an additional project focused on intermediaries. This was not the case for research conducted in India and therefore we were able to add a few interviews with intermediaries.

5. IRIS is a set of standardized metrics used to measure the performance of organizations in social, environmental, and financial aspects.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The ASAE Research Foundation; The Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.

Notes on contributors

Janelle A. Kerlin

Janelle A. Kerlin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Management and Policy at Georgia State University. Her research interests include social enterprise from an international comparative perspective, non-profit earned income, and international NGOs.

Saurabh A. Lall

Saurabh A. Lall is an Assistant Professor in the School of Planning, Public Policy and Management at the University of Oregon. His research interests include social entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial ecosystems, and entrepreneurial accelerators.

Shuyang Peng

Shuyang Peng is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Administration at the University of New Mexico. Her research interests focus on public and non-profit management, human resource management, and social enterprise.

Tracy Shicun Cui

Tracy Shicun Cui, PhD, is an Implementation Specialist in the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at The Rockefeller University.