An updated quantitative analysis of Kerlin’s macro-institutional social enterprise framework

Purpose This paper aims to improve upon the initial quantitative assessment of Kerlin’s macro-institutional social enterprise (MISE) framework (Monroe-White et al., 2015) to test for the effect of country-level institutions on the social enterprise sector. Major improvements are the inclusion of the civil society variable and expansion of the culture component in the analysis. Design/methodology/approach By following Kerlin’s (2013) original work that draws on the theory of historical institutionalism, this paper employs multi-level regression analysis to test the effect of country-level institutional factors on organizational-level social enterprise across countries. This analysis uses new macro-level data specifically for civil society and culture components. Findings The initial assessment of the framework found that several country-level factors had a significant effect on the variance in the size of the social enterprise sector across countries. The analysis provided here additionally shows a significant positive influence of civil society on the size of the social enterprise sector and shows that formal institutions capture the effect of informal cultural institutions when included in the model together. Practical/implications This analysis provides policymakers, development actors and researchers with a better understanding of the influence of civil society on social enterprises and the interaction between formal and informal institutional underlying factors. Originality/value This paper’s significant contribution is the addition of civil society in the MISE analysis, which was not possible before owing to lack of data, and additional cultural analysis.