The Scaling Strategies and the Scaling Performance of Chinese Social Enterprises: The Moderating Role of Organizational Resources

Abstract It is a significant challenge for social enterprises (SEs) to scale up their social impact, especially for those in transforming societies such as China, where the ecosystem of SEs remains at a nascent stage of development. Although previous studies have devoted attention to scaling strategies and scaling performance, none of them has examined the relationship between scaling strategies and scaling performance through empirical quantitative analysis. To address this gap, this study utilizes a hypothesis-testing quantitative method, for the first time, to investigate the divergent impact of different scaling strategies on scaling performance and the moderating role of organizational resources. Our results demonstrate that three types of scaling strategies are positively associated with scaling performance, and the magnitude of the linkages descends from knowledge dissemination through organizational growth to contractual partnerships. Additionally, our results reveal that the adequacy of financial and human resources perform as positive moderators, significantly magnifying the contribution of the scaling strategy of organizational growth to scaling performance. The findings provide important implications for SE managers and practitioners, helping them make informed decisions regarding how to choose and implement suitable scaling strategies in Chinese or other similar contexts, while considering the SEs’ organizational resources.