A paper titled "When does prosocial motivation do real good? A dual motivations approach to social enterprise outcomes", authored by XJTLU International Business School Suzhou (IBSS) academic staff Dr. Anna Hsu, was recently accepted by the top international peer-reviewed academic Journal of Business Ethics.
The Journal of Business Ethics publishes original articles from a wide variety of methodological and disciplinary perspectives concerning ethical issues related to business that bring something new or unique to the discourse in their field. The journal aims to improve the human condition by providing a public forum for discussion and debate about ethical issues related to business, as well as promoting dialogue between diverse groups within academia and wider civil society. It is also one of the journals used by the Financial Times when compiling the prestigious Business School Research Ranking.
Dr. Hsu’s paper investigates how different types of motivation can act together to influence the outcomes of social enterprises (SEs). The findings suggest that prosocial-intrinsic motivation enhances the positive relationships between business and social outcomes, whereas prosocial-extrinsic motivation undermines the relationship related to business outcomes.
Based on her interest in SEs, Dr. Hsu proposed a dual-motivation approach to examine how different types of motivation (prosocial-intrinsic and prosocial-extrinsic motivations) can act together to influence SE outcomes. Existing SE research has tended to emphasize prosocial motivation, leading to the under-theorization and under-exploration of other types of motivation in SEs. The dual-motivation model proposed in this study bridges the gap and has provided new avenues for future research.
Regarding the implications of this research for practitioners, Dr. Hsu notes that, “To ensure SEs achieve their double bottom lines, social entrepreneurs should develop and implement policies, norms, leadership, and practices that embrace the elements of both prosocial and intrinsic motivation to foster and sustain the collective drive of “wanting to help” others, rather than “having to help”.” She also hopes to be able to apply her findings to the practices of for-profit businesses in her future research.
Dr. Anna Hsu currently holds the position of Assistant Professor at the Department of Strategic Management and Organizations in IBSS at XJTLU. She received her PhD degree from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research follows two broad but interrelated topical streams: (1) prosocial motivation and legitimacy in the context of social entrepreneurship (2) employees’ legitimacy judgment and their proactivity in multinational companies (MNCs). Within these streams, she pursues common theoretical themes to understand how individuals, including entrepreneurs, stakeholders and employees, are driven by their human capital, passion, prosocial motivation, and legitimacy judgment.
Over the past year, IBSS scholars have published a number of papers in leading international academic journals at the UTD-24, FT-50, and ABS 4/4* levels, including Management Science, Journal of Finance, Journal of Operations Management, Information System Research, Production and Operations Management, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Research Policy, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of World Business, Journal of Travel Research, Journal of Retailing, Human Resource Management, etc., and have been awarded important research project grants by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Humanities and Social Science Foundation of the Ministry of Education. XJTLU IBSS is well on its way to becoming a top-quality research-oriented business school.
