Explaining the multifaceted nature of social enterprise: impression management as (social) entrepreneurial behaviour

Drawing on data from an in-depth case study of an embryonic social enterprise, this paper explores how social enterprises can utilise the multiple identities of social enterprise to access start-up funding. The social entrepreneur exhibited multiple organisational faces to external stakeholders in order to acquire resources. However, resource holders were not passive recipients of these managed impressions. Each had a strategic interest in the social enterprise being presented in a particular way and exerted coercive pressure on the social enterprise to conform to these co-constructed impressions. Utilising organisational impression management helped the social enterprise resist these coercive pressures.