How social enterprises gain cognitive legitimacy in the post-pandemic period? Social welfare logic and digital transformation

Purpose This paper aims to propose a social enterprise legitimation mechanism by combining the established logic and transformational logic to test the validity of the conceptual model. Design/methodology/approach The authors construct the theoretical framework based on integrating organizational identity theory, attention-based view and collected 128 social enterprises data during the post-pandemic period in China. The authors applied multiple hierarchical regression analysis and mediation analysis to test the research hypothesis. Findings The results show that strong organizational identity contributes significantly to the cognitive legitimacy of social enterprise. Besides, we found that social welfare logic and digital transformation can positively mediate the correlation between organizational identity and cognitive legitimacy. Practical implications Social enterprises enhance legitimacy significantly by social welfare logic comparing with commercial logic, which indicates that social enterprises should allocate more internal resources and attention to present the organization's social value through various distributions. More importantly, social enterprises should embrace digital transformation to enhance transparency and efficiency, decrease transaction costs, enlarge organizational social impact to strengthen cognitive legitimacy. Originality/value The paper first proposed and empirically tested that digital transformation is an important mechanism to enhance the social enterprise's cognitive legitimacy.

Automated summary

The study indicates that strong organizational identity significantly contributes to the cognitive legitimacy of social enterprises. It was also found that social welfare logic and digital transformation can positively mediate the relationship between organizational identity and cognitive legitimacy. Social enterprises can enhance legitimacy by focusing on social welfare logic and embracing digital transformation to strengthen transparency, efficiency, and social impact.