Institutions and social entrepreneurship: The role of institutional voids, institutional support, and institutional configurations

TLDR

The study develops an institutional configuration perspective to identify national contexts that facilitate social entrepreneurship and tests opposing propositions from institutional void and institutional support perspectives. Using a multilevel analysis of 106,484 individuals in 26 countries, the authors examine how formal regulatory, informal cognitive, and informal normative institutions jointly influence social entrepreneurship. The study confirms that formal regulatory, informal cognitive, and informal normative institutions jointly promote social entrepreneurship, emphasizing the critical role of resource support and motivational supply‑side factors and calling for greater attention to institutional configurations.

Abstract

We develop the institutional configuration perspective to understand which national contexts facilitate social entrepreneurship (SE). We confirm joint effects on SE of formal regulatory (government activism), informal cognitive (postmaterialist cultural values), and informal normative (socially supportive cultural norms, or weak-tie social capital) institutions in a multilevel study of 106,484 individuals in 26 nations. We test opposing propositions from the institutional void and institutional support perspectives. Our results underscore the importance of resource support from both formal and informal institutions, and highlight motivational supply side influences on SE. They advocate greater consideration of institutional configurations in institutional theory and comparative entrepreneurship research.