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
initiatives, however, are not without controversy. Drawing from stakeholder theory, and
the main literature on engagement and social enterprise, our research aims to verify the
role of the social dimension as a driver of active stakeholder engagement in the social
enterprise domain. The research project is based on a survey involving 268 active
stakeholders (both internal and external) of 12 Italian SEs. Based on the structural
equation modelling technique, our results provide empirical evidence on the
antecedents of engagement, distinguishing between job and organization engagement.
They confirm the relevance of the social meaningfulness of the work and of adherence to
the social values of the organization as pertinent and appropriate engagement drivers.