A study on the process and mechanism of social enterprise’s legitimation: Based on analysis of social enterprise’s coopetition with multiple stakeholders

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the complete process and underlying mechanism that social enterprises obtain legitimacy during interactions with stakeholders from theoretical integration of institutional theory and organization ecology perspective. Design/methodology/approach: Based on theoretical classification, this paper selects six typical Chinese social enterprises and conducts a multi-case analysis. Findings: The study finds that social enterprises aim at legitimizing single entity or industry and shaping stakeholders’ cognitive boundary simultaneously. Therefore, by adopting constrained cooperation and competition activities, social enterprises use normative isomorphism to achieve personal legitimation and combining ecological niche construction, social enterprises achieve organizational legitimation. By adopting fragmented cooperation-dominant or competition-dominant activities, social enterprises use mimic isomorphism supplemented by competitive isomorphism or population structure creation to obtain industry legitimation. By adopting dynamically integrated coopetition activities, social enterprises use mimic isomorphism and reflexive isomorphism to reach field legitimation. Originality/value: This paper proposes a mechanism model that the coopetition with stakeholders influences the legitimation process, identifies four stages of social enterprise’s legitimation process and the types of legitimacy obtained in each stage and fills the gap of Chinese indigenous social enterprise research.