While the role of cognitive legitimacy in new organizational forms’ development has been extensively studied, the cognitive legitimacy of social entrepreneurship (SE) has so far received limited attention. Drawing from legitimacy theory and organizational ecology literature, we theorize and explore how SE obtains cognitive legitimacy via its prevalence and the legitimacy spillovers of the two categories it encapsulates: new business and nonprofit organizations. Using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, we find evidence for the existence of legitimacy spillovers from both new business and nonprofit organizations to SE activity. Second, the perceived density of social enterprises is significantly related to individuals’ engagement in SE. Third, we find the effect of legitimacy spillover effects is more significant when individuals perceive a lower density of social enterprises. Our study contributes to the research on SE, organizational ecology, and hybrid organizations by exploring the multiple sources for increasing SE’s legitimacy, particularly highlighting the existence of cross-categories legitimacy spillover effect within hybrid organizations.

虽然认知合法性在新组织形式发展中的作用已被广泛研究，但社会企业家精神（SE）的认知合法性迄今为止受到的关注有限。借鉴合法性理论和组织生态学文献，我们理论化并探讨了SE如何通过其流行及其所包含的两个类别（新企业和非营利组织）的合法性溢出来获得认知合法性。利用全球创业监测的数据，我们发现了新企业和非营利组织对创业活动存在合法性溢出效应的证据。其次，社会企业的感知密度与个人对社会企业的参与程度显着相关。第三，我们发现当个人感知社会企业密度较低时，合法性溢出效应更为显着。我们的研究通过探索提高SE合法性的多种来源，特别是强调混合组织中跨类别合法性溢出效应的存在，为SE、组织生态学和混合组织的研究做出了贡献。