Assessing mission and resources for social change: An organizational identity perspective on social venture capitalists 'decision criteria

This research explores how social venture capitalists (SVCs) evaluate social ventures, drawing on organizational identity theory. It examines how the dual identity of social ventures, rooted in both social and entrepreneurship sectors, influences SVCs to value criteria from both domains. Using policy capturing with 44 SVCs, the study found that both social and entrepreneurial sector criteria affected assessments, with entrepreneurial criteria being more strongly emphasized. It also reveals that SVCs do not evaluate ventures uniformly, as their social investment focus influences their weighting of criteria.