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The purpose of this paper is to present a model of corporate social entrepreneurship. The case of Odebrecht demonstrates how companies are using society's sustainability challenges to innovate, in particular by adopting a corporate social entrepreneurship approach that allows the company to differentiate from competitors and create shared value.

This research applies a comparative case study design in combination with a review of the literature in order to present a model of corporate social entrepreneurship.

The case study of two major projects within the Odebrecht group allows us to design a model of corporate social entrepreneurship explaining how the company transforms external triggers such as socio-environmental risks into sustainability innovations, creating competitive advantages.

The two case studies provide some evidence of how companies blend sustainability and innovation within corporate social entrepreneurship strategies. More research is needed in order to refine the patterns and components of the corporate social entrepreneurship model.

Integrating sustainability into the innovation process allows Odebrecht to differentiate itself from competitors and have meaningful engagement with stakeholders. This helps the company to grow, especially in developing economy markets, which face similar sustainability challenges as Latin America.

The combination of corporate entrepreneurship models and these case studies of sustainability innovation helps to create a model of corporate social entrepreneurship explaining how companies can transform external sustainability challenges into shared value creation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the contribution of corporate architecture to social value creation. It especially analyses the social effects of investments in experiential corporate architecture that have been carried out by Italian industrial companies.

This study follows a qualitative approach. It is based on a survey and semi-structured in-depth interviews undertaken with six Italian industrial companies. The dimensions of the social-entrepreneurship model (innovativeness, proactiveness, risk management) proposed by Weerawardena and Sullivan Mort were chosen as a framework to investigate the social effects of investments in corporate architecture.

The social effects of the innovativeness dimension are the integration of the company with the territory and development of sustainability. Proactiveness is related to improving the employees’ wellbeing in the workplace and the community’s quality of life. Risk management ensures the development of the local economic-social fabric.

This study combines social entrepreneurship and corporate architecture by highlighting the social effects of corporate architecture. Further, it proposes the structural embeddedness of the company in the territory of reference, a sense for beauty, and a sense of gift giving as further entrepreneurial traits that are generally not proposed in the social entrepreneurship literature.

The results of this study suggest that top management should consider: that investments in corporate architecture are a deliberate strategy of the company; that profits are not a purpose in and of themselves, but rather a means to achieve the social mission’s objectives; and the relationship with architects in terms of mutual involvement in order to understand corporate and local needs and effectively transform them into appropriate architectural solutions.

Corporate architecture can help to solve a number of social problems, such as improving the community’s quality of life, providing employments opportunities, allowing the community to benefit from places of socialisation and aggregation, and offering facilities and services that support culture and encourage cultural exchange. Given that the social benefits are reciprocal, all stakeholders should financially support companies that invest in corporate architecture.

To the knowledge, this is the first study to connect social entrepreneurship and corporate architecture. This research brings to light some Italian industrial companies that are investing in corporate architecture to create social value in the twenty-first century, after the pioneering investments of the Olivetti company.

This paper studies the role of inter-firm supply chain social capital and intra-firm social capital in enabling Corporate Entrepreneurship (CE), and also investigates the moderating and mediating effect of absorptive capacity.

A correlational descriptive survey research is employed for 200 firms; adopting a 13-item Likert scale obtained from Wang and Li (2016) for measuring inter-firm social capital, and an eight item Likert scale for measuring absorptive capacity. This is in addition to a nine item Likert scale obtained from De Clercq et al. (2013) to measure the intra-firm social capital, and a nine item semantic differential scale developed by Covin and Slevin (1989) for measuring the level of corporate entrepreneurship. Statistical analysis packages SPSS V.24 and AMOS V.24 were used.

Results provide evidence that structural supply chain social capital has an effect on corporate entrepreneurship; mediated by potential absorptive capacity. Additionally, the effect of relational supply chain social capital on corporate entrepreneurship is fully mediated by potential absorptive capacity. Furthermore, the effect of cognitive supply chain social capital on corporate entrepreneurship is fully mediated by potential absorptive capacity. On the other hand, results show that both intra-firm social capital and realized absorptive capacity moderate the relationship between potential absorptive capacity and corporate entrepreneurship.

The convenience sampling technique increases the probability of selection bias. In addition, the research focused on two aspects of intra-firm social capital, namely relational and cognitive dimensions, and overlooked the structural dimension of social capital.

Providing managers with insights about the critical role of developing social capital among supply chain partners to facilitate the transfer and exchange of crucial knowledge necessary for product development and innovation. This is in addition to the need to capitalize on intra-collaborations and cross-functional routines to facilitate CE.

This study provides a required extension to the previous literature, which has not empirically modeled the role of potential absorptive capacity as means by which supply chain social capital dimensions enable CE. Also, the research identifies contingency factors that enable the effect of potential absorptive capacity on CE; namely intra-firm social capital and realized absorptive capacity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how corporate entrepreneurship, social capital and resources contribute to the implementation of supply chain management (SCM) practices in Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) automotive industry.

A conceptual framework of antecedents of SCM practices and several research hypotheses were proposed. Hypotheses were tested with data from original equipment manufacturers suppliers in the ASEAN automotive manufacturing industry. Confirmatory factor analysis and multiple linear regressions were used to test the hypotheses.

The analysis of survey data suggests that corporate entrepreneurship theory and social capital theory play a key role in motivating and preceding SCM practices. However, traditional resource-based explanations of SCM decisions by western manufacturing firms do not always apply to ASEAN automotive suppliers.

This paper may have excluded some crucial constructs that affect SCM practices. This study also suffers from the common limitations of empirical research, including the reliance on a single respondent. Prior studies suggest that firms with better resources are likely to create more effective SCM operations. This study contributes to the literature by adding behavioral explanations to the research stream. That is, drawing on corporate entrepreneurship and social capital theories, the authors’ link firm behavioral factors to their resources and thus help explains SCM practices.

This study provides some notable managerial implications. The study shows that to implement successful SCM practices, emerging ASEAN automotive suppliers should exploit both the internal and external antecedents of SCM. Internal antecedent in the form of corporate entrepreneurship that measures a firm's innovativeness and proactiveness, and external antecedent in the form of social capital that measures a firm's relationships with its supply chain members are important factors that affect SCM practices. Also, these factors are important in counteracting the adverse forces of the environmental uncertainty to improve performance.

These findings extend prior research by establishing the importance of the relationships between SCM practices and its antecedents. Also, this is one of the few studies that specifically examined the ASEAN automotive industry.

Synthesizing theoretical and empirical literature, this study aims to build a theoretical model linking the constructs; corporate entrepreneurship, employee engagement and innovation.

Using an integrative review method the current study conducted an examination of related literature on the areas of corporate entrepreneurship, employee engagement, as well as innovation and developed an integrated model which combines the three constructs. The study bases itself on the resource-based view (RBV) for looking into corporate entrepreneurial ecosystems as organizational capabilities and employee engagement as a human resource. The social exchange theory (SET) was also used to analyse the interrelationships.

An RBV synthesis made on corporate entrepreneurship, employee engagement, as well as innovation literature shows that while corporate entrepreneurship has been recognized as beneficial to bring positive organizational outcomes, attempts to tie it in the core resource, capability and competence input-output linkage are scanty. The study shows that the RBV can be a good way to see human resources as a source of organizational competitive advantage and corporate entrepreneurship as the capability to product innovation as a competence. The study also shows that by combining the RBV with the SET corporate entrepreneurship, employee engagement and innovation can be integrated as a basis for developing organizational competitiveness.

The implication of this paper to future empirical studies is that corporate entrepreneurship can be integrated with the RBV to relate it to the core competitive advantage development endeavour. The implication for policymakers and management practitioners on the other hand is that managers can consider corporate entrepreneurship as a major capability to bring the employee resource on board the innovation process. The study further implies that management practitioners need to provide time, freedom, boundary, reward and support to get their employees engaged in innovation. Hence, managers can integrate the SET into their motivation principles.

The study is original in its attempt to integrate the SET and RBV for studies in the area of corporate entrepreneurship, employee engagement and innovation.

Corporate entrepreneurship is an important way for organizations to gain competitive advantages and achieve sustainable development. However, few studies pay attention to the influence of CEO strategic leadership on corporate entrepreneurship. Drawing on social identity theory and uncertainty-identity theory, this study aims to investigate whether CEO relationship-focused leadership impacts corporate entrepreneurship through middle managers’ (MMs’) organizational identification and whether the indirect effect is moderated by environmental uncertainty.

Using 192 Chinese samples with 192 firm-level and 716 department-level observations, this study uses multilevel structural equations modeling by Mplus 8.0 to test the theoretical model.

This study finds that CEO relationship-focused leadership positively predicts MMs’ organizational identification and corporate entrepreneurship, and MMs’ organizational identification mediates the relationship between CEO relationship-focused leadership and corporate entrepreneurship. In addition, environmental uncertainty moderates not only the relationship between CEO relationship-focused leadership and MMs’ organizational identification but also the indirect effect of CEO relationship-focused leadership on corporate entrepreneurship through MMs’ organizational identification.

This study enriches the understanding of process and contextualization of CEO strategic leadership influencing on corporate entrepreneurship.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to explore the influence of CEO relationship-focused leadership on corporate entrepreneurship.

To investigate the role played by corporate entrepreneurs in the strategic renewal of mature manufacturing companies.

A case study approach is adopted as a means of identifying links between corporate entrepreneurship and social capital. Data are drawn from a three‐year study which incorporates formal and informal interviews with 15 members of a pseudonymous company management team.

The study extends understanding of limits between corporate entrepreneurship and social capital in three ways: corporate entrepreneurs (CEs) can exploit “structural holes” for the benefit of the organisation rather than for career advancement; newcomers are more effective than insiders in overcoming the relational inertia caused by lack of external links; the bridging actions of CEs are important for linking internal activities as well as for accessing external knowledge.

The case is used, in combination with earlier contributions to the literature, as a basis for reconceptualizing the process of corporate entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the international market expansion of multinational corporations (MNCs) to the base of the pyramid (BoP). The authors employ the corporate social entrepreneurship (CSE) perspective to reveal how MNCs can enter this market, the key enabling factors and the benefits they can gain. CSE is related to entrepreneurial and marketing strategies that are inspired by social responsibility.

An exploratory, qualitative multiple-case study has been employed. In-depth interviews were conducted with managers from three MNCs that have entered the BoP market in India.

The findings of this research confirm that successful entry into the BoP requires the pursuit of social responsibility and the adaptation of marketing strategies. In addition, MNCs should identify the key environmental factors (demand conditions and socio-political actors’ expectations) and develop organisational characteristics (management support, network orientation towards non-governmental organisations and availability of financial resources) to match. The findings of this research show that engagement in CSE in countries with considerable BoP populations can bring firms legitimacy and sustainable profitability.

This research is based on interviews with a limited number of MNCs in India. Future studies could generalise the findings of this research to a larger number of corporations in other countries.

This research brings new insights to the field of international marketing by integrating the corporate social responsibility, marketing and entrepreneurship disciplines. The findings of this research offer empirical support for CSE and its role in international marketing strategies.

This paper aims to determine the trends and prospects of the development of social entrepreneurship in Russia and Asian countries.

The methodology includes trend, regression, and correlation analysis and scenario (imitation) modeling and elaborates on perspectives and recommendations for further development of social entrepreneurship in Russia and Asia.

Despite the active development of social entrepreneurship in Russia and Asian countries (its share in the structure of GDP of these countries constituted 2.6% on average in 2018), it accounts for a small contribution to domestic development of socio-economic systems. These countries of Asia in 2018 were peculiar for low level of social freedoms (70th position in the world), low level of healthcare (51st position), moderate level of ecological effectiveness (61.33 points out of 100), moderate level of education (0.767 points out of 1) and low level of development of infrastructure (39 points out of 100). In the provision of social freedoms and healthcare, social entrepreneurship is least developed and is peculiar for a tendency for a decrease. The difference between demand and offer of social entrepreneurship causes an imbalance of the market of social (non-profit, volunteer and charity) services in these countries. This imbalance is to be overcome with the recent tendency of digitization of social entrepreneurship in Russia and Asian countries.

Digitization occupies the last position among the factors of the development of social entrepreneurship. Tax stimulation of social entrepreneurship is preferable, so it is recommended to pay primary attention to it until 2022, for the provision of the balance of the market of social services.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how employing corporate social entrepreneurship and developing a network of relationships with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can support and contribute towards the internationalisation of service firms into the base of the pyramid (BOP) markets in emerging markets.

This research adopts an exploratory approach employing qualitative multiple case studies. Three service firms that have targeted the BOP markets in India were studied. In total, 25 in-depth interviews were conducted with multinational corporations (MNCs) and their NGO partners. Data analysis was facilitated through pattern matching and systematic case comparison.

The findings reveal that, by engaging in social entrepreneurship, these MNCs have focused on the neglected needs of the BOP population, developed sustainable solutions and empowerment, and started with social value creation and postponed value capturing. The pursuit of corporate social entrepreneurship has paved the way for them to establish relationships with NGOs. While the MNCs have mainly had the technical knowledge and financial resources required, collaboration with NGOs have allowed them to learn about the BOP’s specific needs and benefit from the NGOs’ knowledge, human resources and good relationships in this market.

This research unravels how service firms can seize opportunities at the BOP. The authors build on social entrepreneurship theory and bring new insights to the field of international business. In addition, the authors broaden the network view and show how networking with social actors such as NGOs enables the mobilisation of resources, actors and activities in emerging markets.