You Scratch My Back and I Scratch Yours: Investigating Inter-Partner Legitimacy in Relationships Between Social Enterprises and Their Key Partners

Abstract

Social enterprises, like almost all organizations, continuously strive for external legitimacy. To be perceived as externally legitimated by society, social enterprises often engage in strategic partnerships. However, scholars have only recently turned their attention to the legitimating function of such partnerships. The purpose of this article is to address the hitherto neglected construct of inter-partner legitimacy. Drawing on institutional theory, we hypothesize that such inter-partner legitimacy affects the resource transfer among partners, which will, in turn, be recognized by society and will subsequently affect each partner’s external legitimacy. Dyadic data of 121 strategic partnerships between social enterprises and their key partners confirm our hypotheses. We add to institutional theory by integrating the often ignored dimension of inter-partner legitimacy into our analysis and demonstrate its relevance to each partner’s external legitimacy and to resource transfer. Further contributions to the literature on institutional theory, legitimacy, social entrepreneurship, and inter-organizational relationships are identified.

‘Fitting In’ vs. ‘Standing Out’: How Social Enterprises Engage with Stakeholders to Legitimize their Hybrid Position

“…Second, we contribute to the SE legitimacy literature by highlighting the importance of stakeholder engagement in legitimisation exercise. While past research discussed the conferral of legitimation by external actors (Weidner, Weber, and Göbel 2016), it had not sufficiently explored the specific ways in which SE actively engage with their stakeholders to legitimise their hybridity. Literature has shown that SEs have robust support systems as well as collectivism, as their effort to fit in (De Clercq and Voronov 2009; Aaboen, Dubois, and Lind 2013), nevertheless, little has been done in relation to enhancing our understanding of the collaborative activities that can help SEs acquire essential resources in order to stand out (Dart 2004).…”

Social Value Creation in Inter‐Organizational Collaborations in the Not‐for‐Profit Sector – Give and Take from a Dyadic Perspective

“…The relational view thereby offers a more differentiated evaluation of partnerships in the NFP sector than previous perspectives have. Lastly, our study is one of the few to add to the very small body of literature that empirically proves several determinants of the relational view within one model (Weber et al, ).…”

“…Beyond the mutually created social impact, both parties may experience an increased legitimacy that relevant stakeholder groups attribute to them. Such additional benefit is arguably an important motive for establishing inter‐organizational relationships in the NFP sector (Dacin, et al, ; Herlin, ; Rueede and Kreutzer, ; Weidner et al, ). Our study thus adds to the rare empirical dyadic investigations on the question of which partner, if either, benefits from particular types of resources when complementary resources are exchanged (Jamali and Keshishian, ).…”

“…Being externally legitimated is important to every organization whether acting individually or in collaboration because only organizations and partners regarded as legitimate might generate joint value effectively (Dacin et al, ; Herlin, ; Kumar and Das ; Rueede and Kreutzer, ; Selsky and Parker, ). Legitimacy thereby becomes a key component of joint value creation (Weidner et al, ).…”

Social entrepreneurs in challenging places: A Delphi study of experiences and perspectives

“…Collaborative networking is influential in SE success, and their ability to connect and support one another increases knowledge, capacity and income streams (Jenner, 2016;Weidner, Weber and Gobel, 2016). Jenner (2016) however, posits that the pursuit of commercial viability and growth results in a landscape where SEs are now competing as opposed to collaborating.…”