Text

theses

Unlike the commercial counterparts who hold a constant salient business identity that is for profit and opportunity oriented, social entrepreneurs need to resourcefully control the tension and reach the equilibrium between both salient social activist identity and business identity. However, a very limited number of studies exist to explain and uncover the process of social innovation through social entrepreneurship. In this dissertation that consists of three essays, I strive to provide insights on the knowledge of social entrepreneurship and social innovation. Essay 1 of this thesis starts by reviewing current literature of social innovation and entrepreneurship to depict a picture of domain knowledge and delineate future research questions. First, the boundaries of social innovation processes have not yet been fully defined, leaving considerable room to contribute to both theory and practice. Further, social entrepreneurship opportunities are the constructed results of motivation and entrepreneurial alertness, as well as institutional, societal, organizational, and market contexts where they are embedded. Likewise, these contexts also bring the institutional norms and routines that challenge and constrain innovation process.Finally, building on current theories, I bring together the three approaches (i.e., individualistic, structural and contextual) together and present a new conceptual framework to investigate social innovation. Essay 2 focuses on the main gap of how do the social entrepreneur’s salient role and personal identity, which concurrently straddle both business and social welfare logic, affect their cognitive schema and behavior patterns regarding being resourceful. By doing so, this study tests a model of social entrepreneurial identity configuration and resourcefulness for Chinese social entrepreneurs. Results indicate social entrepreneur identity is composed of both the pro-social and the business identities (both role and personal identity), and that the salience and structuring of them lead to the variation of their resourcefulness. Resourcefulness was highest when the social entrepreneur’ identity configuration holds a salient role identity aligned with both social and business logics (i.e., balanced social entrepreneur). However, the perception that the local institutional environments valued social businesses weakens the between-group difference. Implications for social innovation and future research are also discussed. Essay 3 relies on institution-based view to examine the role of both subnational institutional environment and resourcefulness of social enterprises in China on their innovative endeavors. Using survey data on Chinese social ventures, our results show that regional institutional development enhances social innovation, while the role of institutional development can be altered by entrepreneur's engagement of resourceful behavior. These findings contribute to research regarding determinants of social innovation under emerging market and provide new lenses to see innovation from institution-based view and entrepreneur's active resources building. Implications and limitations of the research are discussed.

ETD_8959

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Huangen Chen

doi:10.7282/T3G44TP7

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.