Research On The Influence Mechanism Of Social Relations On The Performance Of Social Enterprises

With the development of social economy,social problems such as the gap between the rich and the poor,pensions,environmental protection and employment are becoming increasingly prominent,which are difficult to be solved by the government and public welfare organizations alone.Social enterprises are organizations that aim to solve social problems,use and combine resources creatively,and balance the acquisition of profits with the achievement of social goals.Through business model innovation,social enterprises integrate resources and reinvest profitable funds in their operations,providing a sustainable opportunity to solve social problems.Social enterprises have shown their unique advantages in solving various social problems,and their importance has become more and more prominent as they can make up for the lack of capacity of the public sector to provide social services and improve the "market failure" of the private sector in social welfare.However,social enterprises in China currently suffer from widespread poor performance,with nearly half of them running at a loss.Scholars have paid attention to the role of social relationships in breaking the resource constraint for social enterprise development,but have not explained this process mechanism in depth.Therefore,this study explores the impact of social relations on the performance of social enterprises and the intermediate mechanisms based on resource-based theory.We propose that social relations bring resources to social enterprises to promote business model innovation,which in turn has a positive impact on social enterprise performance.Market information management capabilities help social enterprises collect and integrate information from various parties and enhance the effective use of resources by social enterprises,which can enhance the positive effect of social relationships on business model innovation.By testing the hypotheses through research data of 198 social enterprises,we found that social relations have a significant positive impact on both economic and social performance of social enterprises,business model innovation plays a mediating role,and market information management capability plays a positive moderating role between social relations and business model innovation.Based on these data results,our study provides theoretical and practical implications for firms to use social relations to transform into superior economic and social performance.The contribution points of this study are divided into two main aspects:theoretical contribution aspects and practical implications.In terms of theoretical contributions,first,we empirically test that social relations have a positive effect on the economic and social performance of social enterprises,enriching the antecedent studies of social enterprise performance.While existing studies have focused on the impact of internal resources,this study finds a positive role of social relations from the perspective of external resources,which expands the research perspective.Second,relying on resource-based theory,this study finds that business model innovation is an intermediate mechanism for the transformation of social relations to social enterprise performance,which opens the black box of the transformation of social relations to performance and complements the intermediary mechanism between resources and performance of strategic activities.Third,this study verifies the moderating role of market information management capabilities on social relations and business model innovation,illustrating that internal capabilities are an important boundary conditions for resource transformation.In terms of practical implications,this study proposes that social enterprises should strengthen the accumulation and use of social relations,improve the efficiency of the use of social relationship resources,reduce survival pressure and promote the achievement of performance goals.Social enterprises need to focus on their business model innovation and understand the characteristics of the dual value creation of social enterprises,so as to build the business model that is most conducive to social enterprises’ development.Social enterprises should improve their market information management capabilities and promote the transformation of social relations to business model innovation.