The contradictory faces of social enterprise: impression management as (social) entrepreneurial behaviour

Abstract

This paper demonstrates that social enterprises can exhibit multiple faces to different stakeholders in order to access resources. The research involved a longitudinal case study of a group of Kurdish refugees and asylum seekers producing a theatrical play based upon their collective experiences. Participant observation enabled a deeper understanding of the phenomena under investigation. The approach to analysis was inductive, drawing out themes for further investigation. This paper focuses upon one particular theme: the role of organisational impression management in resource acquisition. Key findings are that the social enterprise is seen and presented in different ways by different internal stakeholders; social enterprises can use organisational impression management to demonstrate multiple faces to different resource holders in order to acquire resources; however the resource holders are not passive recipients of impression management. Each has a strategic interest in the social enterprise being presented in a particular way and the social enterprise needs to be seen to conform to these impressions.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 5 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.