Conforming with diverse expectations: How do social enterprises acquire symbolic capital?

Social enterprises need to manage their dual missions. On the one hand, they have to develop a sustainable revenue model and maintain their businesses. On the other hand, they should communicate that they do not prioritize commercial objectives, as their primary focus is social impact. The authors explore how social enterprises manage symbolic meanings while pursuing their dual missions. They have examined symbolic actions with netnography and derived a resource acquisition model. This chapter has three contributions to the literature. Firstly, while symbolic capital is a crucial resource for entrepreneurial success, activities to capture this resource are understudied in the literature. The authors have developed a novel perspective to fill this gap. Secondly, there are various studies examining resource acquisition in the US context. This study enriches our understanding of the focal phenomenon as it is conducted in the Turkish context. Thirdly, this is one of the few studies collecting empirical data with netnography and may foster further studies based on online data sources.