Is Stereotyping Intrinsic to Firm Narratives? A CATA-Based Content Analysis of Social Business Venture Profiles

In this thesis we study social judgments made against social ventures regarding an important issue namely, the choice of the legal form. Choosing a legal form is a challenge to social ventures since each form comes with advantages and disadvantages (Defourny & Nyssens, 2010). They can operate as non-profit, for-profit organizations or take a hybrid form (Zahra et al., 2008). Both non-profit and for-profit forms suffer from certain constraints. For example, non-profit organizations are limited in raising capital. For-profit organizations may not be eligible for receiving funds or governmental grants. From the legal perspective social businesses main objective is social wealth creation. The second objective should be 5 | P a g e economical wealth creation (Santos, 2012). Stakeholders make instinctive connection between legal form and the core purpose of the organization, which has real consequences. Previous empirical evidence suggests that for-profit organizations suffer from the prejudice of being greedy and selfish, mainly interested in increasing owners rather than societal wealth (Dees, 1998). On the other hand, non-profits might be perceived as organizations, which are not capable to operate efficiently on the market. They lack competencies of traditional businesses. Customers might even perceive them as firms that offer low quality products (Aaker, Vohs & Mogliner, 2010). Thus we argue that social judgments made by stakeholders have consequences whether it is attracting investors or getting customers to buy their products. For these reasons we argue that social judgments on these firms have to be studied systematically.