State, Market or Society: Configurational Effects of Institutional Logics on Social Entrepreneurship

Although prior research of social entrepreneurship has been focused on the influences of isolated institutional logics factors, little is known about how different institutional logics factors produce joint effects on social entrepreneurship participation. Based on the configuration theory, this study investigates how government logics, market logics, and social logics work together effectively to promote social entrepreneurship participation. Using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) survey, we apply the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to investigate the driving mechanisms for achieving high/not-high prevalence rates of social entrepreneurship among 38 countries. The results suggest that high prevalence rates of social entrepreneurship are achieved through the interaction of multiple institutional logics, rather than by any single factor. Three different configurations can explain the presence of high prevalence rates of social entrepreneurship: the social-logic dominant-driven path, the market-logic dominant-driven path, the market-society dual-logics-dominant path. Further, we also find that the pathways for the absence of high prevalence rates of SE are not simply the negation of conditions for the presence of high prevalence rates of SE. Our findings not only contribute to the institutional logics literature and link to the stream of social entrepreneurship, but also inspire policy makers to effectively improve entrepreneurial environment.