Expectations Meet Reality: Leader Sensemaking and Enactment of Stakeholder Engagement in Multistakeholder Social Enterprises
基于对28家法国多利益相关方社会企业领导者的访谈，研究他们如何理解期望与现实的差距，并调整利益相关方参与策略以保持一致性或解决不匹配问题。
Given the urgency of global crises, interest abounds in alternative organizational forms (e.g., multistakeholder social enterprises, MSEs), promising structural solutions to engage diverse stakeholders in the creation of joint social, economic, and democratic values. Yet, studies of the who, how , and why of stakeholder engagement are predominantly rooted in for-profit contexts, assuming objective boundaries between insider/outsider stakeholders and engagement as a means to an end. The context of MSEs challenges both of these assumptions. Based on interviews with leaders of 28 French MSEs, I show how the latter made sense of their expectations versus the reality of stakeholder engagement. Leader sensemaking strategies informed the enactment of (revised) stakeholder engagement strategies to maintain coherence, or address misalignment, between expectations and reality. The article contributes to the literature by challenging assumptions of stakeholder engagement in for-profit firms. It also cautions against an overreliance on designated organizational forms to enable substantive stakeholder engagement.