Founding Team Entrepreneurial Experience, External Financing and Social Enterprise Performance

Abstract

This paper examines the influence of founding team entrepreneurial experience (for-profit and non-profit) on social enterprise performance and also considers the contingent effects of two forms of external financial capital (commercial and philanthropic finance), through the lens of both human capital and institutional logics. Using a global dataset of social enterprises, we find that non-profit entrepreneurial experience boosts social enterprise performance. Additionally, we find that having a complementary institutional logics (social or commercial) fit between the founding team's human capital and external financial capital is positively associated with social enterprise performance.