Working For Impact, But Failing to Experience It: Exploring Individuals’ Sensemaking in Social Enterprises
研究发现社会企业成员可能主观上感受不到工作的影响力，并揭示了他们通过内化和补偿两种意义建构实践来应对这种模糊性，对理解社会企业成员的工作体验有启示。
Individuals start and join social enterprises to catalyze social impact but may not subjectively experience their work as impactful. In this article, we inductively uncover when social enterprise members question the impactfulness of their work and how they engage in sensemaking to experience their work as impactful. Exploring the experiences of members across two social enterprises with different missions, we provide insights into instances creating ambiguity of or discrepancies in impactfulness and unearth how individuals navigate these in different circumstances with two distinct sensemaking practices: internalizing and compensating. We reveal the efforts required to experience work as impactful, highlight the heterogeneity and agency in maintaining this perception, and suggest a potential dark side for members and missions of social enterprises.