COLLECTIVE PRO-SOCIAL VENTURING: THE ROLE OF
EMOTIONS
Steffen Farny, Aalto University, Finland
Ewald Kibler, Aalto University, Finland
Solange Hai, ESADE Business School, Spain
Paolo Landoni, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
Abstract
A critical, yet under-explored challenge for collective pro-social ventures is to manage members’
pro-social motivation and active venture engagement. Based on an inductive-abductive, multiplecase analysis of community enterprises, we find that entrepreneurs’ inclusive practices to resolve
organizational tensions sustain members’ needed emotional connectivity with the pro-social
venture. Theorizing on a cognitive-emotive model of pro-social venture development, we develop
propositions on (1) how pro-social motivation, engagement and activism unfold in a collective
venturing context and (2) how entrepreneurs’ management of internal process, benefit and impact
tensions strengthens the emotional attachment and long-term affective loyalty between members
and the pro-social venture.
INTRODUCTION
Pro-social business venturing is substantially motivated by non-economic gains and emotions:
it is the compassion to support the well-being of others that creates a shared vision between the
founders, the enterprise and its members (Arend, 2013; Miller et al., 2012). In such purpose-driven
forms of enterprising, individual members need to have the ability as well as the motivation to
increase communal or societal well-being (Shepherd, 2015). In this paper, we argue that a critical,
yet underexplored, challenge for pro-social ventures is the incorporation of the heterogeneity of
members’ pro-social motivation—a temporal psychological state promoting the welfare of others
(Grant, 2007)—to maintain members’ collective commitment to achieve the venture’ multiple
objectives. Therefore, we question how do entrepreneurs manage member’s attachment to and
engagement in pro-social business venturing?
In addressing this question, we build on positive psychology (Grant, 2008) and the theory of
emotions in social movements (Jasper, 2011) to conceptualize the relationships between individual
pro-social motivation, collective pro-social engagement and the potential emotional reactions
emerging from tensions in collective pro-social venturing. Empirically, we apply a multiple-case
analysis to examine four community enterprises in developed economies. By design, community
enterprises are an ideal-typical form of a collective pro-social venture that attracts members with
high pro-social motivation. We collected data from 36 interviews, 46 days of participant
observation and a variety of secondary sources. Our analysis follows inductive-abductive theorybuilding research, by recursively going back and forth between data, emerging themes and theory
(Gioia et al., 2013; Huy et al., 2014).
Our study makes at least two contributions to pro-social business venturing. First, we develop
propositions on how individual pro-social motivation unfolds in a collective venturing context. As
an antecedent for engagement, pro-social motivation is strengthened/ weakened depending on the
individual’s continuous emotional appraisal of the non-economic gains created through his/her
engagement. Second, we offer propositions how entrepreneurs’ management of internal structural
tensions creates (or hinders) emotional attachment and affective loyalty between members and the
venture. In the development of the pro-social venture, resolving tensions generates a continuous
emotional attachment between involved members and the venture. This attachment enables prosocial ventures to take on dominant institutions to make a wider pro-social difference. A
continuous positive appraisal of such outreach activities in turn creates affective loyalty, a deeper
emotional bond that facilitates the generation of attractive non-economic gains in the long-term.
We conclude the paper by introducing a cognitive-emotive model of the entrepreneurial
management of collective pro-social business ventures, and discuss its implications for future
entrepreneurship research.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Pro-social motivation
Drawing on positive psychology literature, compassion for others has been summarized as
possessing high pro-social motivation. Pro-social motivation is the desire to contribute to other
people’s well-being (Grant, 2007). It can be understood as a psychological state in which an
individual focuses on the objective to benefit other people (Batson & Powell, 2003; De Dreu,
2006; Grant, 2007). Moreover, pro-social motivation is associated with personal initiative,
organizational citizenship behavior and stronger work engagement (De Dreu & Nauta, 2009).
Within this context, we perceive pro-social motivation as an antecedent to pro-social
entrepreneurial action (Miller et al., 2012; Renko, 2013). It explains individual-level engagement
for the benefit of others, even future generations (Grant, 2008; Schwartz & Bardi, 2001).
Engagement in collective pro-social venturing
Embedded in the social movement theory on emotions (Jasper, 2011), we argue that attaining
to emotional experiences helps better understand the functioning of collective pro-social ventures.
Emotions, in this context, are treated as a social and contextualized process (Gooty et al., 2009;
Sanchez-Burks & Huy, 2009), reflecting a ‘feeling state’ that is linked to collective venturing
(Elfenbein, 2007). Frequent social interactions between pro-social entrepreneurs and venture
members require an inclusive process on how to tackle different interests and emotional feedbacks
(Hallett, 2003). Thus, different tensions in pro-social ventures may result in different emotional
reactions that need to be managed (Ashkanasy et al., 2002; Russell & Feldman Barrett, 1999).
Since active membership in pro-social ventures is substantially driven by the compassion to
support others (Arend, 2013; Miller et al., 2012), unpleasant emotional reactions may strongly
decrease engagement in venturing activities, and vice versa (Grodal & Granqvist, 2014). Prior
research supports the impactful role of managing emotions by illustrating how members’ emotions
shape their level of engagement in collective activities, while impacting entrepreneurial decisionmaking and venturing processes (Podoynitsyna et al., 2012).
METHOD
We applied a multiple-case analysis to focus on the pro-social entrepreneurs’ management of
organizational tensions as the main unit of analysis. We examine both the tensions as such, and the
members’ emotional appraisal to them (Grodal & Granqvist, 2014; Jasper, 2011). This enabled the
study’s focus to be on the replication of emotional reactions to organizational tensions, helping to
reveal common patterns among a similar sample group (Santos & Eisenhardt, 2009). We
theoretically sampled four community enterprises, an ideal-typical form of collective pro-social
ventures: Kartoffelkombinat in Germany, The People’s Supermarket in England, Retenergie in
Italy and Som Energia in Spain.
Our analysis follows a three-step systematic inductive-abductive analysis, by recursively going
back and forth between the data, emerging theoretical accounts and existing concepts (Gioia et al.,
2013; Huy et al., 2014). First, we identified first-order codes that revealed reoccurring topics, for
instance community empowerment, institutional change and sustainability. Second, we used open
coding to identify second-order themes in the data (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). With the help of
NVivo 10, we organized the data around emerging codes and similar themes in order to
understand the initial motivation, the arising internal conflicts that need to be managed as well as
the outcome of managing tensions. Third, the codes were compared between the cases and
abstracted into theoretical sub-categories and aggregate theoretical dimensions. Emerging
theoretical categories were compared to existing knowledge in the literature to ensure a correct
attribution of existing themes (e.g. affective loyalty—Jasper 2011; pro-social activism—King
2008; pro-social motivation—Grant 2007) and a proper specification of new themes.
RESULTS
Pro-social orientation in pro-social venturing
We identify pro-social orientation as an essential trigger in the development process of prosocial ventures. Our developed model (Figure 1), linking theoretical categories that emerged from
the data (Figure 2), shows that pro-social orientation consists of pro-social motivation, pro-social
engagement and pro-social activism, three concepts that differ in their intensity level. Pro-social
orientation explains the interplay between cognitive and emotive reasons for entrepreneurs and
member commitment in collective pro-social enterprises.
Managing structural tensions in pro-social venturing
We identify three internal tensions that substantially challenge emotional connectivity of
engaged members in pro-social business ventures. The first we call process tension, in which topdown management principles clash with democratic decision-making processes. The second refers
to a benefit tension, in which benefits for one outweigh benefits for others. The third is defined as
impact tension, in which financial and venture growth conflicts with ecological sustainability
values. At their core, the three tensions require from entrepreneurs the management of pro-social
venture structures in accordance with their multiple organizational objectives. If managed poorly,
the venture risks member disengagement. If managed well, it strengthens the emotional
connectivity between engaged members and the pro-social venture.
Emotional connectivity in pro-social venturing
We identify emotional connectivity as an important outcome, and related feedback loop, in the
development process of pro-social ventures. Emotional connectivity comprises two concepts that
differ in their feeling intensity towards an enterprise: emotional attachment and affective loyalty.
Emotional attachment reflects an individual’s positive feelings about and affective bond with a
pro-social venture, its local members and daily practices (Jones & Massa, 2013; Kibler et al.,
2015). At an emotionally more intense level, affective loyalty encompasses “relatively stable
feelings” about others or about objects, such as love, trust or respect (Jasper, 2011, p. 287). Thus,
with regards to pro-social venturing, we define positive affective loyalty as relatively stable
feelings about, and a strong positive emotional connectivity with, the venture’s societal mission.
In sum, while the sustaining of a member’s immediate emotional attachment to the venture relies
on the continuous creation of positive emotional appraisals, affective loyalty reflects a rather
‘taken-for-granted’ emotional bond with the pro-social business venture.
DISCUSSION & IMPLICATIONS
Collective pro-social venturing essentially requires members’ pro-social orientation and ability
to engage in the alleviation of other’s suffering and the creation of communal wealth (Shepherd,
2015). Thus, a critical challenge for pro-social ventures is to incorporate joining members’ prosocial motivation to energize members’ commitment to collectively engage in achieving the
venture’s objectives. We developed a cognitive-emotive entrepreneurship model (Figure 1) that
proposes how the management of tensions builds a stronger emotional bond between
entrepreneurs, engaged members and a pro-social enterprise. This is essential for collective prosocial enterprises that partly rely on an active membership to compensate for a lower efficiency
level compared to purely commercial enterprises (Boone & Özcan, 2014).
Our analysis shows that in pro-social venturing member’s initial pro-social motivation can
trigger sustained pro-social engagement when being involved in resolving structural tensions,
which, in turn, strengthens a member’s emotional attachment to the pro-social enterprise. Thus, as
an antecedent for engagement (Miller et al., 2012; Shepherd, 2015), pro-social motivation is
strengthened/weakened depending on the individual’s continuous emotional appraisal of the noneconomic gains created through his/her venture involvement. Being only a temporary
psychological state (Grant & Berry, 2011), the sustaining of pro-social motivation thus requires
the accumulation of positive experiences that emotionally connect a member to the venture and
encourages her/his active venture involvement.
Proposition 1: Members’ emotional connectivity with a pro-social venture strengthens and
sustains their pro-social motivation to continue being actively involved in this pro-social
venturing endeavor.
Within this context, our study suggests that pro-social entrepreneurs’ successful practices in
resolving internal tensions strengthens and sustains members’ positive emotional connectivity,
which is essential for collective pro-social ventures to develop and prosper. While previous
research has emphasized the outcomes of emotions in entrepreneurship, we elucidate on the
generation of emotions as an outcome in business venturing (Cardon et al., 2012; Shepherd, 2015).
In particular, we state that:
Proposition 2: The more pro-social entrepreneurs lead an inclusive-yet-hierarchical decisionmaking process, balance others-yet-self-oriented benefits and create triple-bottom-line impact, the
more likely engaged members’ emotional connectivity is strengthened and sustained.
In addition, our findings suggest that venture members with strong ‘other-oriented’ pro-social
motivations show an interest in the maintenance of inclusive operating principles and thus how
internal tensions are managed (i.e., means) as well as the immediate and long-term value created
(i.e., goals). In contrast, we argue that ‘self-oriented’ members are mainly motivated to join the
collective pro-social venture because of its immediate gains created for its closest ties, including
oneself (i.e., goals-centered). For instance, temporarily executing hierarchical decision-making
power does not equally harm all members, as it poses a means and not a goals-centered tension
(Pache & Santos, 2013). Hence, we suggest that members’ emotional experience intensity depends
whether a conflict (i.e., negative experience) relates to their ‘self-oriented’ motivation (i.e.,
passion to create value for her-/himself) and/or ‘other-oriented’ motivation (i.e., compassion to
create value for others) (Miller et al., 2012; Rynes et al., 2012).
Proposition 3: Members’ intensity of emotional appraisals of how internal tensions are managed
(means) depends on their weighing of ‘self’- and ‘other’-oriented pro-social orientation in prosocial venturing.
Finally, our study implies that a sustained positive appraisal of emotionally attached members can
build up affective loyalty to the venture. We suggest that entrepreneurs in pro-social ventures need
to continuously align the collective and each member’s pro-social motivation and that such
balancing act is likely to cause sometimes-unpleasant emotional reactions (Grodal & Granqvist,
2014) affecting the (dis)engagement among individual members. A high level of emotional
connectivity between a member and an organization enables the emergence of pro-social activism,
whereby a pro-social venture’s basic principles are no longer questioned.
Proposition 4: Through the pro-social entrepreneurs’ management of internal tensions, the
continuous active engagement of emotionally attached members’ can generate and maintain
affective loyalty to the pro-social venture and, in turn, enhance collective pro-social activism
among those venture members.
In sum, our study suggests that collective pro-social venturing is more likely to be successful
when entrepreneurs’ management of structural tensions is able to create and sustains members’
emotional connectivity with the venture. With the spike in research on the role of emotions in prosocial venturing, we hope this work helps advance its further development.
CONTACT: Steffen Farny; [email protected]; (T) +358 40-3538031; School of Business,
Aalto University, Lapuankatu 2, PO-Box 21230, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: This research has received funding from the European Union’s 7th
Framework Programme under grant agreement number 613194: “Sustainable Lifestyles 2.0: End
User Integration, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (EU-InnovatE)”.
Figure 1: Cognitive-emotive pro-social venturing model.
Figure 2: Data Structure.