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Introduction
Social enterprises (SEs), organizational forms designed to create social impact (Doherty et al., 2014), have received increasing attention from scholars and practitioners. By adopting a hybrid model that blend social and commercial objectives, SEs seek to foster economic sustainability while addressing neglected social and environmental issues (Battilana and Dorado, 2010; Ebrashi, 2013). However, this hybrid model presents unique challenges for SEs (de Mon et al., 2022), leading to distinct barriers to growth compared to those faced by commercial ventures (Davies et al., 2019). For instance, despite operating within the same labor market as commercial firms, SEs face heightened recruitment challenges as their managers require a broader diversity of skills to manage diverse relationships with social beneficiaries, partners and volunteers (Austin et al., 2006; Hynes, 2009).
Scholars have shown a growing interest in SE barriers to growth. Studies have approached barriers to growth in various ways, employing different concepts with similar meanings. For examples, SE barriers to growth are associated with specific constraints such as productive tensions (Battilana et al., 2015), mission drift (Ebrahim et al., 2014), risks of scaling strategies (Zhao and Han, 2020), resource constraints (Bacq and Eddleston, 2018; Ciambotti and Pedrini, 2021) and institutional constraints (Ismail and Johnson, 2021; Kerlin et al., 2021; Sengupta and Sahay, 2017).
Several studies have adopted a complex multilevel analysis to approach barriers to growth, such as those by Ciambotti and Pedrini (2021) and Davies et al. (2019). Although very little research on SE barriers to growth has adopted it, this multilevel approach benefits a systematic understanding, providing important insights by featuring the complex interactions among dimensions of barriers to growth. For example, Davies et al. (2019) identified patterns at individual, organizational, and institutional levels, explaining the complex array of internal and external barriers to SE growth. While Davies et al. (2019) observed young SEs in developed countries, our study extends this examination to matured SEs in developing country. Given the ecosystem weaknesses SEs face in developing countries, studies of SE barriers to growth may yield important insights, as advocated by scholars (Ismail and Johnson, 2021; Sengupta and Sahay, 2017). In responding to these calls, our study seeks to address the central research question: What barriers hinder the growth of...