Research On The Acquisition And Evolvement Mechanism Of Legitimacy In Social Enterprises

Social enterprises are new organizational forms that originated in the Western developed countries in recent years.With the innovative idea of providing social services to the public through its business operations,social enterprises have opened up new ideas and direction for the government,business enterprises and non-profit organizations to solve the "triple failure" dilemma,which is "government failure","market failure" and "voluntary failure",that have emerged when confronted with complex social problems.As important carrier of social innovations and entrepreneurial activities,social enterprise own the dual features of economic and social,and perform a hybrid attributes of market value and social value.On the one hand,the dual nature of social enterprise can create advantages to solve social issues sustainably.On the other hand,in our country,for lack of overall law system and external cognition,the dual nature of social enterprises has put its growth and development into question and dilemma,which is particularly significant with organizational legitimacy dilemma because of the difficult to balance the “economic” and “social”.Existing researches carried out the discussion of legitimacy strategy in social enterprises according to the classification of different organization legitimacy,but lacks analysis to the legitimacy evolution mechanism of different social enterprises.Therefore,this research bases on promoting the development of social enterprises,from the perspective of management and marketing,integrate the theories of organizational legitimacy,organizational socialization,and interaction ritual chains,to study the acquisition and evolution of organizational legitimacy in the development of social enterprises.Firstly,focusing on core research topics,we gathered and reviewed references in related fields at home and abroad,using “social enterprises”,“organizational legitimacy”,“social organization”,and “customer role behavior” as keywords.Through a systematic review of the references,we found the gap in theories that existing references has yet to discuss,such as the organizational legitimacy evolvement of social enterprise in its growth period,the stakeholder governance of social enterprise,and then extracted our core issue of this research.Secondly,on basis of reality and review of the theory,this study identified the acquisition and evolution of organizational legitimacy in different stages of the development of social enterprises,through longitudinal research on two typical social enterprise cases.Results show that for social enterprises,under the guidance of social management policies stimulus carried out by stakeholders in the enterprise,the acquisition of organizational legitimacy presents a dynamic evolution feature.Social enterprises can gradually take "group socialization","task socialization","organization socialization " strategies to guide stakeholders to take part in the double closed-loop interactions of economy and society,which leads the acquisition of organizational legitimacy in social enterprises to present the evolution from "relational legitimacy" to "market legitimacy" and then to "social legitimacy".Finally,based on the "stimulus-organism-response" framework,this study focuses on the perspective of individual customers,and constructs a model of the factors affecting the legitimacy of social enterprise organizations from the perspective of socialization as well as their influence on customer role behaviors.Findings suggest that,customer socialization strategy is a driving factor and effective means for social enterprises to acquire organization legitimacy.More detail,group socialization has a direct impact on relational legitimacy,task socialization has a direct impact on market legitimacy and organizational socialization has a direct impact on relational and social legitimacy.Meanwhile relationship legitimacy,market legitimacy,and social legitimacy,these three dimensions take effect in turn so that three kinds of socialization strategies have indirect impact on different legitimacy separately.Finally,the different legitimacies acquired by social enterprise can positively further affect the customer's role behaviors,such as customer citizenship behavior and repeat purchase behavior.This research took the unique social enterprise as object,did an in-depth analysis and validated the mechanism in acquisition and evolution of organizational legitimacy in social enterprises.With the increasing advancement of social enterprise,the legitimacy of the organization takes the sequential evolution of “relational legitimacy – market legitimacy-social legitimacy".Different socialization strategies of group socialization,task socialization,organization socialization carried out to stakeholder is an important factor in promoting and achieving this evolution.This conclusion not only expanded the organization legitimacy theory from commercial enterprise to social enterprise,which enriching studies on social enterprise,but also expanded the contents and boundaries of organization legitimacy theory,as well as discussing the acquisition and evolvement mechanism of legitimacy in social enterprises through combining theory of organization legitimacy and interaction ritual chains.On the other hand,it also deepened the application research on organization socialization theory,and provided strategy suggestions to acquire legitimacy more effectively in the growth of a social enterprise,and achieve the creation of common economic value and social value.