Penalty or Reward? The Role of Hybrid Identities in Social Enterprises’ Resource Acquisition

Resource acquisition is essentially important for social enterprise’s resilience and success. Prior studies have explored the relationship between resource acquisition outcomes and social enterprise’s hybridity, however, ignored the heterogeneity of the funders in relative to it. This paper examines how hybrid identities, of both the social enterprises and financial resource providers, might be associated with the financial resource acquisition. In particular, we study how the social and financial identities jointly affect the possibilities of social enterprises in acquiring financial resource. Using a social enterprise database from 2013 to 2019, we find that philanthropic donors and equity investors have different attitudes toward hybridity. The possibility that equity investors support social enterprises is similar to their for-profit counterparts, while the possibility that philanthropic donors support social enterprises is lower compared to their nonprofit counterparts. We discuss the implication of these findings for social entrepreneurship research and practice, and the identity theory perspective.