Enabling social entrepreneurship: examining the impact of state, market and religious factors

Abstract

PurposeThe study examines how the interactions among three prominent institutional logics—state, market and religion—fundamentally shape the patterns of individuals’ engagement in social entrepreneurship (SE).Design/methodology/approachThe study develops a configurational theoretical framework and uses fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to test the hypotheses by gathering data on social ventures from 35 countries from the World Values Survey and Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.FindingsThe results show that the prevalence of social entrepreneurial ventures is enabled by different combinations of logics of action, governance mechanisms, strength of religious beliefs and religious pluralism.Originality/valueThis research reveals that the relationship between institutional logic profiles and SE is contingent on the coherence between different institutional logics.