Research On The Relationship Between Social Entrepreneurship Orientation And Corporate Performance From The Perspective Of Mission Deviation

With the continuous development of global economy,social problems such as inequality between the rich and the poor,environmental pollution,aging and food safety have become increasingly prominent.Especially for China in transition,social problems have become more serious.In the face of these social problems,it is far from enough to rely solely on the government's efforts,and non-profit organizations often have limited role in solving these social problems due to their weak profitability,which determines that enterprises need to play a greater role.However,the traditional concept of corporate social responsibility only understands it as“charity” and “public welfare”,so it often does not have economic sustainability,which limits the enthusiasm of enterprises to participate in social problem-solving.On the contrary,traditional economic entrepreneurship(business entrepreneurship)only focuses on economic performance but ignores social performance,so it does not have social sustainability.Therefore,corporate social responsibility should break through narrow thinking and move towards a new stage of solving social problems,exerting social influence and realizing social value through marketization and innovation.Accordingly,economic entrepreneurship should take more social performance into consideration,take the society as the guide,and actively implement the social entrepreneurship oriented strategy.The emergence and popularity of social entrepreneurship not only reflects the innovation and effects of the global society in the sustainable solution of social problems,but also represents the reflection and revision of the current world on the maximization of corporate shareholders' profits.In August 2019,the CEOs of dozens of large companies in the United States announced their company's goal changed from a single shareholder value maximization to a muti-stakeholder model.As a new form of entrepreneurship to solve social problems by market means,social entrepreneurship has become the frontier and hot spot in the field of entrepreneurship research.It is worth noting that the existing research on social entrepreneurship is mainly in a narrow sense,and little attention is paid to the antecedents of social entrepreneurship and the relationship between social entrepreneurship and legitimacy,especially the social entrepreneurship of enterprises.In addition,due to the dual institutional logic of social entrepreneurship(social logic and market logic),the mission of social entrepreneurship often drifts in practice,and the dilemma of “fish” or “bear's paw” is faced,which constitutes a very important puzzle in the study of organizational level: “How can corporate social entrepreneurship overcome the conflicts and differences of the dual institutional logic,maintain business competitiveness and social value creativity,and achieve sustainable growth?” which also promotes the “mission drift / deviation of social entrepreneurship” to become an important research topic.Based on the background of China's economic transformation,social innovation and change,this paper mainly explores three issues based on the theory of institutional logic,entrepreneurship theory and enterprise growth theory.First,what kind of mission deviation does social entrepreneurship have,what kind of impact it will have on the performance of enterprises when it occurs,under what conditions the dual institutional logic of social entrepreneurship will conflict,and under what conditions they can coexist.Second,what are the antecedents of social entrepreneurship at the organizational level.Third,the relationship between social entrepreneurship and legitimacy.What kind of impact will corporate social entrepreneurship have on organizational legitimacy.In order to explore and answer the above three questions,this article focuses on the core concept of social entrepreneurship,builds a research model of social entrepreneurship orientation and corporate performance,and uses questionnaires to collect required data.Statistical analysis software such SPSS19.0,Mplus7.0 conducts empirical analysis,trying to open the dark box of social entrepreneurship orientation and corporate growth.Through theoretical analysis and empirical test,the findings are as follows:(1)Relationship learning and business ethics have positive effects on social entrepreneurship orientation,and their combined effects also contribute to the occurrence of social entrepreneurship orientation.(2)Although the unilateral social entrepreneurship orientation is conducive to the performance of enterprises,due to the fact that enterprises are embedded in various complex environments so the dual institutional logic of corporate social entrepreneurship is often out of balance,which leads to mission deviation.There are two forms of mission deviation in social entrepreneurship: S-type mission deviation and E-type mission deviation.Environmental dynamics play a positive moderating role in the relationship between social entrepreneurship orientation and economic performance,but negative moderating effect on the relationship with social performance.Therefore,in the dynamic environment,the market logic will occupy the dominant position,and social entrepreneurship orientation will only focus on economic performance but abandon social performance.Corporate social entrepreneurship shows the form of E-type mission deviation,which is not conducive to social sustainability,so it is not conducive to the growth of enterprises.External stakeholder pressure exerts a positive moderating effect between social entrepreneurship orientation and social performance,but has no significant impact on economic performance.Therefore,under the pressure of external stakeholders,social logic will play a leading role,which makes social entrepreneurship show more concern for social performance.Corporate social entrepreneurship shows S-type mission deviation,which is not conducive to economic sustainability,and thus it is not conducive to the growth of enterprises.Co-creation of value and resource slack play a positive moderating effect between social entrepreneurship orientation and economic performance/ social performance.Therefore,market logic and social logic can coexist under the condition of co-creation of value and resource slack,so social entrepreneurship orientation can obtain economic performance and social performance at the same time,and effectively avoid mission drift,which can achieve economic and social sustainability,and contributes to the growth of enterprises.(3)Social entrepreneurship orientation has a positive impact on organizational legitimacy.Enterprises actively implement the strategy of social entrepreneurship orientation is conducive to the acquisition of legitimacy.The innovations and theoretical contributions of this paper are mainly reflected in the following points.First,the empirical method was used to study the relationship between social entrepreneurship orientation and enterprise performance,which enriched the research scope and content of social entrepreneurship.Second,it expands the research on the antecedent dependent variables of social entrepreneurship.Third,this paper put forward two forms of social entrepreneurship mission drift,explores the dual-institutional logic conflict and compatible dark box.Finally,it studies the relationship between economic development level and social entrepreneurship orientation,and between social entrepreneurship orientation and organizational legitimacy.