Exploring the link between social work, entrepreneurial leadership, social embeddedness, social entrepreneurship and firm performance: a case of SMES owned by Chinese ethnic community in Turkey

Purpose Background: Both social work activities and social initiatives, innovative solutions today it has to support the development and change of the society by producing. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of social entrepreneurship on firm performance of Turkey small and medium enterprises (SMEs) located in the Chinese ethnic community. In addition, the authors also examined the moderator role of social embeddedness in the relationship between social entrepreneurship and the Chinese ethnic community of Turkey SMEs on firm performance. Design/methodology/approach Because it is seen that the decomposition validity is achieved between the dimensions for HTMT values, the current study, using the survey-based methodology, used structural equation modeling to achieve the research objectives. Ques-tionnaires were issued among 628 participants in selected international companies in Turkey and China. To mitigate any uncertainty and errors, the questionnaires were distributed face-to-face by hand (in Turkey), online (in China). A total of 274 questionnaires were used for the analysis which makes up to the 53.6% of the response rate. The findings of this study show that social entrepreneurial behavior influences organizational performance with a significant mediation between family ties and social networks and a strong moderation in entrepreneurial leadership. The findings of the present study largely agreed with the results of the hypothesis. The results of this study will give an idea about how social entrepreneurial behavior and entrepreneurial leadership can affect organizational performance and how social embeddedness affects this relationship. Findings Outcomes will be important to SME leaders as they seek to link results, practices and results. SME leaders will better understand the role of social entrepreneurial behaviour and entrepreneurial leadership in corporate performance. This will apply in business practice and leadership in striving to improve the level of performance. Research limitations/implications In this study, Turkey and China are limited to 274 participants in international companies. Because the findings of this study are limited to the sample it represents, there is no generalization of these results for all countries. However, given that the number of studies on this subject is very inadequate, this research is important in terms of shedding light on the work to be carried out next. Practical implications This empirical research confirms the impact of social entrepreneurial behavior on organizational performance. Social entrepreneurial behavior integrates organizational performance, family ties, social networking and entrepreneurial leadership and empirically tests the relationship between them. Trade relations will ensure the interlocking of the countries involved in the research, and thus, improve the relations of the countries. Originality/value The main aim of this study is to investigate the impact of social entrepreneurship on firm performance of Turkey SMEs located in the Chinese ethnic community. Trade relations will ensure the interlocking of the countries involved in the research and thus improve the relations of the countries. The authors believe that social entrepreneurial behaviour will close the gap in important mediation and entrepreneurial leadership between family ties and social networks and positively impact organisational performance. At the same time, as social capital is required for social work and social service is currently dealing with social capital at micro (bonding), mezzo (bridging) and macro (binding) levels, the authors recommend that studies be carried out that will contribute to the theoretical, research or application literature for the variables involved in the study.