Research On Corporate Social Entrepreneurial Orientation And Its Effect

Social organizations and corporate social entrepreneurial activities increasingly arise since21st century, helping many social problems to be tackled. But current research on social entrepreneurial orientation (SEO) is insufficient:connotative defining lacks consensus, conceptual dimensions remain to be explored and its effect lacks empirical test. Under this status quo, this paper aims to construct the SEO conceptual dimensions and further investigate its effects on corporate performance in Chinese enterprises. Thus, this paper, in theory, enriches current research findings of SEO, and shows how Chinese enterprises conduct social entrepreneurship for which theoretical foundations as well as suggestions are put forward in practice.This research covers two topics, one is SEO conceptual dimensions’construction, and the other is research on SEO effects. When analyzing the former, this paper firstly obtained the initial idea about SEO conceptual dimensions by documentary analysis method. Then grounded method was employed to analyze data from in-depth interview conducted with four biomass energy enterprises in Fujian Province in order to verify initial idea and further abstract new dimensions. When analyzing the latter, this paper, based on questionnaire survey on157enterprises in Beijing, Fujian, Tianjin etc., adopted correlation analysis and multivariate regression analysis to explore SEO’s direct effects on corporate performance. Besides, the different effects under different internal environment consisting of corporate social mission and sustainability were investigated. And regulatory effect of industry competition and government support upon SEO’s effect was also analyzed by hierarchical regression analysis method.Hence, this paper drew following conclusions:first, SEO is a multidimensional concept which consists of resources expansion, social anticipating and reciprocal synergy; second, SEO has positive effects on corporate performance under ideal environment leaving out third-party variables; third, different internal environment will exert influences upon how SEO impacts corporate performance; fourth, to which extent SEO could impact corporate performance will be regulated by industry competition and government support.Therefore, corresponding suggestions for designing and conducting social entrepreneurship strategies were put forward as follow:firstly, enterprises should give weight to each SEO conceptual dimension according to circumstances to construct organic combination; secondly, each enterprise’s own internal environment ought to be taken into account when selecting appropriate SEO strategies, and implementing extent is to be strictly controlled throughout implementation process; finally, enterprises are advised to utilize the positive regulatory effect of external environment.