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The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that drive superior social enterprise performance for women-led social enterprises. The authors examined the role of individual entrepreneur cognitive characteristics contributing to social enterprise performance and recommended a framework for women's social entrepreneur development.

The authors conducted an exploratory qualitative study of 22 women founders of social enterprises using a semi-structured questionnaire. In-depth interviews were conducted, and the transcripts were analyzed using thematic content analysis.

This study found a significant impact of self-efficacy on the performance of social enterprises among the studied subjects. Social support in the form of material, information and emotional support enhanced the ability of women social entrepreneurs to better achieve business sustenance and continuance of operations. The business skills of the women social entrepreneurs led them to move from just social impact generators to becoming thought leaders. The strong prosocial motivation of the founders contributed to building their resilience in the face of adversity.

This study extended the existing theories on social entrepreneurship by bringing the dimensions of entrepreneurial resilience in driving social enterprise performance along with business skills. Thus, it provided an enhanced explanation to the existing body of knowledge on contributors to superior social enterprise performance.

This study gathered insights into the role of entrepreneurship education focused on business skills, especially for women social entrepreneurs in achieving superior performance for their social ventures. This also reconfirmed the role of social support and how structurally this could be provided by educational systems to aspiring women social entrepreneurs.

The practice of social entrepreneurship by women social entrepreneurs has been growing. Its importance in developing economies because of its ability to make grassroots changes at the lower levels of society was substantive. Women have shown more inclination toward social business with an affinity for prosocial contribution. By focusing on nurturing these social enterprises, governments as well as global agencies like the United Nations and the World Economic Forum could accelerate social change. Furthermore, support for the current women social entrepreneurs as change-makers making a difference in society could be achieved.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research study was one of the first studies on women social entrepreneurs focusing on the factors of self-efficacy, social support and entrepreneurial resilience contributing to social enterprise performance. This study combined the social entrepreneurship intention theory with entrepreneurial resilience and business skills to understand the factors leading to successful social enterprise performance for women social entrepreneurs.

Literature on the relationship between social performance and economic performance of social enterprises has long been inconclusive. This paper aims to investigate whether and, if so, how social performance contributes to economic performance of social enterprises. Specifically, drawing from the resource-based view and signalling theory, the study examines how the development of reputation, which enables social enterprises to signal the enterprises' stakeholders' commitment towards social causes, mediates the relationship between the two.

Employing a quantitative research design, data were collected from a sample of 164 social enterprises in the UK and analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM).

The results illustrate that whilst the direct relationship between social and economic performance is inconclusive, social performance contributes indirectly to improve economic performance through improving social enterprise reputation.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first of this kind in the context of social enterprises which sheds light on the long-standing conflicting literature on the relationship between the dual objectives (i.e. social and economic) by providing reputation as the mediating variable.

Social enterprises pursue growth through business model innovation, and acquiring legitimacy is critical to ensuring such innovation. The purpose of this paper is to examine how business model innovation and legitimacy affect the performance of new social enterprises during different development stages.

This paper uses the hierarchical regression analysis and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to examine social enterprise performance and constructs and verifies a moderated mediation effect of business model innovation, based on a survey of 183 new social enterprises in China.

This paper finds that business model innovation has a positive effect on social enterprise performance and an organization's legitimacy, acting as the partial mediator between them. The mediating effect of legitimacy is more positive when social enterprises are in the early growth stage. A more detailed analysis of fsQCA explores the necessary and sufficient conditions for the growth of social enterprise performance across different stages and reveals five configurations that improve the performance of social enterprises.

This study explores the role of business model innovation and legitimacy in social enterprise growth and provides empirical evidence about the causal configuration of high-performing social enterprises.

This research clarifies two antecedents of social enterprise performance and proposes a more inclusive framework that addresses the factor of dynamic development stages. This paper deepens the understanding of social enterprise performance in China.

The exploration of performance determinants in social enterprises has gained increasing relevance among researchers and practitioners, particularly in rural tourism. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the contributions of transformational leadership and social entrepreneurship to the performance of social enterprises in the context of rural tourism. Further, the mediating roles of social capital, creativity and social value were investigated.

Data were gathered through a survey of 168 employees of social enterprises operating in the rural tourism setting. Eight surveyors were sent out to conduct the survey. Data were analyzed by structural equation modeling (SEM) using AMOS 18.0.

The results of the SEM suggested that transformational leadership is positively associated with social value, social capital and performance of social enterprise. In addition, social entrepreneurship had a significant influence on social value, social capital and performance of social enterprise. Creativity and social value predicts the performance of social enterprise. Further, social capital was found to have a positive relationship with creativity. Finally, the mediating roles of social capital, creativity and social value were also confirmed. The findings thus highlight the power of the social value creation and social capital in the social enterprises operating in the rural destinations.

The findings assert that social entrepreneurship and transformational leadership are key sources of social value creation, social capital and creativity in rural tourism context indicating the need for additional efforts on this kind of entrepreneurial activity. The findings can motivate policymakers to promote social entrepreneurship in rural tourism destinations as a means of stimulating bottom-up social capital and social value creation.

This study is among the first to examine the hypothesized relationships focusing on tourism social enterprises.

The purpose of this study is to develop BSC model of social enterprise. Performance analysis tool of BSC have been brought over from the business world, designed and created from the perspectives of profit‐based businesses. The BSC is a strategic performance measurement and management tool designed for the private sector acting as a communication/information and learning system, to measure “where we are now” and “where to aim for next”. It prescribes a plan for translating “vision” and “strategy” into concrete action across four perspectives at different stages, depending on the business. These perspectives are “financial”, “customer”, “internal processes” and “learning and growth”, each of which is connected by cause‐and‐effect relationships that reflect the firm’s strategy. Social aims of social enterprise are to accomplish desired outcomes which are to employ vulnerable people and to provide social services. The measurement factors of financial perspective are stable funding, efficiency of budgeting, stakeholders’ financial supports, and trade profit. The measurement factors of customer perspective are government, social service users, employees, local communities, supplier, social activity company, and partnership with external organizations. The measurement factors of internal process perspective are organizational culture, organizational structure/management, internal/external communication, quality of products and services, information sharing. The measurement factors of learning and growth perspective are training and development, management participation, knowledge sharing, leadership of CEO and manager, and learning culture.

Small social enterprises (SEs) face many challenges as they seek to secure their survival, sustainability and performance, but little is known about the interrelations among these challenges and how these SEs might mitigate their challenges by using online platforms.

Drawing on the results of 19 in-depth semi-structured interviews with founders of small SEs in Australia, the authors present two integrative frameworks: one demonstrates how different challenges directly or indirectly influence SE performance, and the other represents the linkage between online platforms use and SE performance.

The authors’ findings indicate that SEs face social, economic and organizational challenges, and that SEs use online platforms to mitigate these challenges and improve their performance. Online platforms enable these enterprises to identify funding opportunities, recruit staff and volunteers, connect with other SEs, form partnerships, promote their organization, market their products and services, and avoid competition and duplication in their ecosystem.

The authors provide a guiding model for further research on using online platforms to mitigate challenges for small enterprises to improve performance. This study advances current understanding of why some SEs fail to thrive, while others survive, flourish and grow.

The authors’ study advances the resource-based view by identifying how online platforms offer a valuable resource to improve SE performance, and assist managers to maintain the strategic direction of their enterprise.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether the use of current performance tools is consistent with the specific features of social enterprises.

In a first phase, the main performance tools are divided into strategic planning tools, reporting tools and economic optimization techniques. In a second phase, 15 criteria emerge from a literature review to characterize the specific features of social enterprises. These criteria are brought together into an analytical framework, which makes it possible to analyze the relevance of each performance tool in relation to the specific features of social enterprises.

What comes out of the analysis is that the tools globally fail to account for the specific features of social enterprises. That none of them met more than half of the criteria suggests the need for new performance tools based on strong theoretical bases.

Only the main performance tools are taken into account in this study. Some tools developed specifically for social enterprises might score better if they were tested in the framework.

Managers in social enterprises often feel helpless when having to choose or develop a performance evaluation tool. This paper allows them to test whether the tools they use are well suited to social enterprises, and provides them with useful guidelines for developing new ones.

Literature on performance evaluation for nonprofits or social enterprises mostly remains conceptual or focusses on one single tool. The author fills the gap by studying a broad range of performance evaluation tools and comparing them.

The purpose of this paper is to review the growing emphasis on quantifiable performance measures such as social return on investment (SROI) in third sector organisations – specifically, social enterprise – through a legitimacy theory lens. It then examines what social enterprises value (i.e. consider important) in terms of performance evaluation, using a case study approach.

Case studies involving interviews, documentary analysis, and observation, of three social enterprises at different life-cycle stages with different funding structures, were constructed to consider “what measures matter” from a practitioner's perspective.

Findings highlight a priority on quality outcomes and impacts in primarily qualitative terms to evaluate performance. Further, there is a noticeable lack of emphasis on financial measures other than basic access to financial resources to continue pursuing social goals.

The practical challenges faced by social enterprises – many of which are small to medium sized – in evaluating performance and by implication organisational legitimacy are contrasted with measures such as SROI which are resource intensive and have inherent methodological limitations. Hence, findings suggest the limited and valuable resources of social enterprises would be better allocated towards documenting the actual outcomes and impacts as a first step, in order to evaluate social and financial performance in terms appropriate to each objective, in order to demonstrate organisational legitimacy.

Findings distinguish between processes which may hold symbolic legitimacy for select stakeholder groups, and processes which hold substantive, cognitive legitimacy for stakeholders more broadly, in the under-researched context of social enterprise.

This study systematically assesses and empirically examines the research question: How do social skills influence resource acquisition and social performance? Specifically, this study applies RBV theory from strategy to link social skills, resource conditions and the performance of social enterprises.

For this, we surveyed social enterprises in Korea to collect data and used SPSS 18.0 for hierarchical regression analysis.

In the Korean context, first, the results show that all social skills of social entrepreneurs are positively related to social performance. Second, among independent variables, self-promotion is positively associated with financial support and expressiveness is positively associated with marketing support. However, the rest of the independent variables have no significance. Finally, obtaining financial support from their partner mediates the relationship between self-promotion and social ventures' social performance, and obtaining marketing support from their partner mediates the relationship between expressiveness and social ventures' social performance.

This study provides two contributions. First, this is the first study to apply and test the RBV systematically and empirically in the context of social enterprises. Second, the results suggest that social skills and support types are important to social value creation.

This paper aims to explore the social entrepreneurs’ attention allocation and their resource action that lead to hybrid organization using the paradox theory. Paradox theory deepens understandings of the varied nature, dynamics and outcomes of entrepreneurial tensions. This study explores the systematic effects of internal and external attention on both economic and social performance.

First, theoretically, hypotheses linking different attention allocations to ambidextrous behavior and entrepreneurial performance were formulated. Subsequently, the empirical studies based on Chinese social entrepreneurship were conducted to test the hypotheses.

The study provides support to the hypotheses showing that external attention is linked to resource acquisition and social performance, while internal attention is linked to resource acquisition and strategic human resource management and thus these ambidextrous behaviors promote both social and economic performance. Furthermore, normal pressure moderates the relations between internal attention and strategic human resource management only.

The research measures entrepreneurs’ attention with questionnaire rather than psych test. Also, static data rather than longitudinal research is designed to test the hypotheses.

Deeper understanding of the attention of social entrepreneurs and resource action can help entrepreneurial outcomes and can potentially contribute to paradox and tension management by entrepreneurial practitioners in China.

Social entrepreneurs’ different attention allocation and related entrepreneurial ambidextrous behavior processes are linked to paradoxical thinking for the first time. The findings of this research can potentially enhance social entrepreneurship paradoxical thinking aimed at preventing mission drift.