Social Enterprise as an Institutional Innovation in China: Challenges to Institutional Isomorphism

Institutional intermediaries as legitimizing agents for social enterprise in China and India

“…In China and India, intermediaries assist with the growth and performance of SEs where SEs have at times been overlooked, underdeveloped, or viewed with skepticism (Bhatt, Qureshi, and Riaz 2019). Previous research conducted in China suggests that intermediary organizations there have also helped diffuse the concept of SE, worked out a contextualized definition of social entrepreneurship, and mediated government and cultural expectations for SE (Kerlin, Peng, and Cui 2017). Here we further test whether and how SE intermediaries play an institutional intermediary role in legitimizing and institutionalizing SEs.…”

“…Following on DiMaggio and Powell (1983), this is how institutions "cast the new innovation within the existing institutional order." Specifically, we look at isomorphic pressures that work against SEs and how they employ strategies to work around these pressures (Oliver 1991) as well as how they leverage existing positive isomorphic pressures to lend legitimacy to an institutional innovation (Kerlin, Peng, and Cui 2017). Thus, we propose that one of the core tenets of institutionalism, that "isomorphism legitimates" (Raffaelli and Glynn 2015, 10), remains at the heart of how new organizations such as SEs are institutionalized in a new environment even as other isomorphic pressures work against this.…”

“…SEs are a relatively new institutional phenomenon in China (Kerlin, Peng, and Cui 2017) and India, as such they face challenges to their legitimacy and lack institutionalization. The precariousness of their condition is directly related to their situation as institutional innovations that have disrupted the expected state of affairs in a number of ways.…”

“…Specifically, Oliver (1991) proposes that rather than always succumb to outside pressures, institutions can have strategic responses to such pressures which help preserve their identity and legitimacy. Previous research in China (Kerlin, Peng, and Cui 2017) suggests that these responses can involve various types of isomorphism: coercive isomorphism which stems from government laws and regulations as well as accrediting bodies that put pressure on organizations to behave in certain ways or face penalties; mimetic isomorphism which occurs when organizations look to and adapt best practices from other organizations in their immediate environment to improve their performance; and normative isomorphism when organizations conform to the norms and expectations of their respective professions (DiMaggio and Powell 1983). We also include reflexive isomorphism where funders hold undue influence over the direction of the discourse around an institutional innovation due to their relative power (Nicholls 2010).…”

“…Definitional discussions of SE in China identify both older indigenous organizational forms, such as specialized farmers' cooperatives and formerly social welfare enterprises 2 that aim to achieve social and commercial goals, as well as Western constructs of the concept (Cui and Kerlin 2017) that draw heavily on nonprofit or nongovernmental and for-profit legal structures to house SE activities (Yu 2013). This research considers the latter emerging Western concept of SE due to its recent entrance as an institutional innovation in China and its need for legitimation (Kerlin, Peng, and Cui 2017;Bhatt, Qureshi, and Riaz 2019). Central government involvement in this new SE sphere has been limited due to a wait and see approach especially in terms of establishing a dedicated legal form for SE (Cui and Kerlin 2017).…”