The Social and Economic Mission of Social Enterprises: Dimensions, Measurement, Validation, and Relation Robin Stevens Nathalie Moray Johan Bruneel Social entrepreneurs have a dominant social mission and generate revenue to ensure financial viability. However, most research treats the extent to which social entrepreneurs actually adhere to social and economic mission as a black box. Performing higher order confirmatory factor analysis on a sample of social enterprises (N∼270), this study identifies dimensions and validates measures for understanding and delineating social and economic missions, and shows how the two constructs relate to each other. The theoretical untangling and the empirical validation of social and economic missions as distinct constructs—and multiple potential constellations of attached relative importance—opens up opportunities for quantitative hypothesis-testing research in social entrepreneurship. Introduction Scholars, governments, media, and nongovernmental organizations increasingly recognize the importance of social entrepreneurial approaches to problems the world is facing today (Christie & Honig, 2006). Research interest in social entrepreneurship (SE) increased in parallel and became an important research topic in entrepreneurship. SE originated in the not-for-profit sector (Harris, Sapienza, & Bowie, 2009; Sud, VanSandt, & Baugous, 2009; Weerawardena & Mort, 2006) as a response to diminishing government involvement in the economy and society (e.g., Nicholls, 2006; Sharir & Lerner, 2006). Essentially, social enterprises—irrespective of terminology, and organizational or legal form—have in common that they explicitly focus on creating social value (Austin, Please send correspondence to: Robin Stevens, tel.: +32-9-248-88-43; e-mail: robin.stevens@hogent.be, to Nathalie Moray at nathalie.moray@hogent.be, and to Johan Bruneel at j.bruneel@imperial.ac.uk. P T E & 1042-2587 © 2014 Baylor University 1 January, 2014 DOI: 10.1111/etap.12091 September, 2015 1051 DOI: 10.1111/etap.12091 1042-2587 V C 2014 Baylor University