Engaging active stakeholders in the social enterprise: Evidence of social values as a challenge to organizational identity.

The pressure on firms to be socially responsible continuously increases. Social\r\ninitiatives, however, are not without controversy. Drawing from stakeholder theory, and\r\nthe main literature on engagement and social enterprise, our research aims to verify the\r\nrole of the social dimension as a driver of active stakeholder engagement in the social\r\nenterprise domain. The research project is based on a survey involving 268 active\r\nstakeholders (both internal and external) of 12 Italian SEs. Based on the structural\r\nequation modelling technique, our results provide empirical evidence on the\r\nantecedents of engagement, distinguishing between job and organization engagement.\r\nThey confirm the relevance of the social meaningfulness of the work and of adherence to\r\nthe social values of the organization as pertinent and appropriate engagement drivers.