Also named as social networking, entrepreneurial social networks discuss relations with other organizations, business groups and people who help entrepreneurs to create enterprises. The general objective of this study is to analyze how social entrepreneurs use their social networks or relationships to get resources and organizational legitimacy during the conception phase of their business.
This paper particularly intends to identify social ties as defined by Granovetter (1973)Granovetter, M. (1973, May). The strength of weak ties. The American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360-1380., to point out the resources mobilized through social networks according to the classification proposed by Brush, Greene and Hart (2001)Brush, C. G., Greene, P. G., & Hart, M. M. (2001). From initial idea to unique advantage: the entrepreneurial challenge of constructing a resource base. Academy of Management Executive, 15(1), 64-80., and to verify social organizations legitimacy criteria based on Atack's (1999)Atack, I. (1999). Four criteria of development NGO legitimacy. World Development, 27(5), 855-864. typology. This study has a qualitative approach and is exploratory and descriptive in nature. The research strategy adopted was of multiple case study. Evidences were collected through semi-structured interviews with three social entrepreneurs. The dialogues were recorded and subsequently transcribed. The interview content was analyzed adopting the content analysis technique. After analyzing the cases, it was observed in the entrepreneurs’ social networks both weak and strong ties. The latter were basically family, friends and professional colleagues. With regard to weak ties, public and private companies and donors/individual collaborators were cited. The strong ties, in particular, encouraged virtually all types of resources needed for the conception of the social organizations analyzed. Weak ties, on the other hand, promoted a good portion of the physical resources required for the analyzed organizations. It was also possible to observe that social networks contributed to legitimize the social organizations analyzed. It was verified how participative they were with respect to promotion of formal procedural legitimacy. However, entrepreneurs still could have enhanced this source of resources, taking better advantage within the substantive-purposeful legitimacy, fostering the promotion of mechanisms to motivate and attract volunteers, developing criteria to measure the effectiveness of promoted activities or taking advantage of the intellectual capital of their networks by encouraging collective decision-making.
Social entrepreneurship; Social networks; Ties; Resources; Organizational legitimacy