The impact of mission drift in social enterprise´s legitimacy

: a consumer perspective

Abstract

This dissertation strives to explain the consumers perceptions over the legitimacy of a social enterprise when facing mission drift. Mission drift takes place when organizations deviate from the social mission to pursue commercial activities in order to enhance financial objectives. Thus, the aim of this paper is to understand the consumers perceptions of the legitimacy of social enterprises in the presence of mission drift, how it affects these organizations, and explain what social enterprise’s leaders might do to prevent the risk of mission drift. For this purpose, a qualitative research was conducted based on semi-structured, face-to-face interviews to consumers that identify themselves with social enterprises. The research concluded that mission drift will damage two specific types of legitimacy, pragmatic and moral legitimacy, since for consumers it will be impeditive for the organization to create social value and to act in accordance with the general norms in society. Additionally, contrarily to the existing literature, some findings suggest the need of mission drift for organizations to be able to support the long-term sustainability of their social mission. However, research on this topic is still lacking. Furthermore, some consumers expect a lack of support from stakeholders due to legitimacy issues caused by mission drift being this one of the strategies suggested to overcome mission drift: to integrate and give more voice to consumers in the decision-making process. Therefore, this dissertation has made valuable contributions to the field of social enterprises, mission drift and legitimacy.

Date of Award	1 Feb 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Marta Bicho (Supervisor)