Navigating Divided Waters: How Social Ventures Reframe to Maintain Legitimacy in a Politically Polarised Context

Sammanfattning

Political polarisation is reshaping the institutional environment in which social ventures operate, yet research on social venture legitimacy still largely assumes stable, consensus-driven settings. This study explores how social ventures in Sweden reframe to maintain or reconstruct legitimacy when that consensus breaks down. Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with founders and senior leaders of ventures working in politically sensitive sectors, including migration, welfare, education, and sustainability. The data were analysed using the Gioia methodology. What emerged is that Sweden's political shift did not just change policy; it fractured the normative ground these social ventures had long relied on. Social ventures experienced this through fragmented audiences, funding that was cut or redirected, and a shift in oversight from trust to control. In response, social ventures adapted on two levels. Narratively, they tailored their language to different audiences and anchored claims in evidence rather than values alone. Structurally, they diversified their funding, embedded themselves within established institutions, and built alliances that lent them credibility. Both forms of adaptation, however, operated within limits. Social ventures articulated that they would not compromise their social mission regardless of external pressure. This study introduces the concept of bounded reframing to theorise this dynamic, and contributes to organisational legitimacy theory, framing research, and the social venture literature by extending each to polarised institutional contexts.