Author(s): Changwon Cho, Boyoung Kim, Sungho Oh
Follow-up discussions on business success and sustainability are gaining attention beyond the advent of social enterprises. Social enterprises should seek solutions to corporate survival and continuous growth through corporate value increase and economic value retention with practical and strategic management, including the capital, business model, and excellent workforce like public companies. This study defines strategic orientation, altruism, and practicality as the components of social entrepreneurship. It aims to empirically verify whether these three components affect a social enterprise’s sustainability by mediating dynamic capabilities and organizational effectiveness concerning social enterprise activities. To this end, data were collected through an online questionnaire survey targeting 228 employees of Korean social enterprises. As a result of the analysis, strategic orientation and practicality significantly affected dynamic capabilities, but altruism did not significantly affect dynamic capabilities. Strategic orientation and altruism significantly affected organizational effectiveness; however, practicality did not affect it. Dynamic capabilities positively affected organizational effectiveness and sustainability, while organizational effectiveness positively affected sustainability. Consequently, a social enterprise’s strategic orientation affected dynamic capabilities and organizational effectiveness. It was confirmed that altruistic and practical factors showed differences in effects on sustainability depending on dynamic capabilities and organizational effectiveness.