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1 – 10 of over 4000Hyejin Kwon, Youngok Choi and Richard Hazenberg
The paper aims to explore the roles and impact of design in incubating and accelerating social enterprises. It aims to understand design’s influence on social enterprise…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to explore the roles and impact of design in incubating and accelerating social enterprises. It aims to understand design’s influence on social enterprise ecosystems and in improving outcomes for social enterprises.
Design/methodology/approach
The study used an exploratory, qualitative approach, using case studies and interviews. The comparative case-study methodology was applied to evaluate the influence of design on the development of social enterprises in the UK and South Korea and identify critical issues in their utilisation of design. Empirical data included: in-depth case studies of design utilisation practices (UK = 6; South Korea = 15) and design applications (UK = 2; South Korea = 2) for the growth of social enterprise and its ecosystem; 27 social enterprise/design experts (UK = 17; South Korea = 10); and 22 social enterprises (UK = 12; South Korea = 10). Content and thematic analysis were used to synthesise the findings.
Findings
Findings demonstrate the differing influences of design on social enterprise, from improving products/services and business models to enhancing social enterprise ecosystem support and networks. Future directions are suggested for applying design for social enterprise growth, business stage development and systematising interactions between the social enterprise and design sectors.
Research limitations/implications
The research is based on case studies from only two countries. Further, the adoption of working definitions of social enterprise in the countries may result in the research underestimating the heterogeneity of social enterprise.
Practical implications
The findings contribute to optimising efficient ecosystem development to improve social enterprise competitiveness and innovation.
Originality/value
This paper establishes a research foundation on design for social enterprise, offering theoretical and practical insights into its impact on growth.
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Julianna Paola Ramirez Lozano, Percy Samoel Marquina Feldman and Renato Peñaflor Guerra
This study aims to understand the leadership characteristics of founders of social and environmental enterprises in Latin America who have achieved business success with a focus…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to understand the leadership characteristics of founders of social and environmental enterprises in Latin America who have achieved business success with a focus on sustainability despite difficult social, economic, political and even health contexts in which they live.
Design/methodology/approach
This nonexperimental research is a qualitative, descriptive and exploratory study. Twenty-one in-depth interviews were conducted with social/environmental entrepreneurs of the Kunan Network (an organization that groups the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Peru).
Findings
The study analyzes the leadership profile and characteristics of entrepreneurs who have created profitable businesses with a social/environmental focus that solve relevant social problems and contribute to improving people’s quality of life and caring for the environment.
Research limitations/implications
Although only 21 business leaders with outstanding participation and positive social and environmental impact were included in this study, they were supported and recognized by the Kunan Network.
Originality/value
The study contributed to the conceptualization and understanding of the profile of leaders of social and environmental enterprises, whose main challenges are to solve social or environmental problems of society and contribute to improving the quality of life of people and the environment. Knowing the profile of these entrepreneurs generates value to the knowledge of the subject and contributes to understand and propose strategies to improve the ecosystem of social-environmental entrepreneurship in emerging countries such as Peru. This will contribute to the creation of relationships and alliances with various social actors: public, private, third sector, academia, among others, for the management and promotion of sustainable business.
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Anirudh Agrawal and Kristjan Jespersen
Impact investors differ from venture capital firms as they invest to create social and commercial value. This paper pursues the question: how do impact investors select social…
Abstract
Purpose
Impact investors differ from venture capital firms as they invest to create social and commercial value. This paper pursues the question: how do impact investors select social enterprises? The aim of this study is to understand the selection and investing process of impact investors.
Design/methodology/approach
This study developed a database of 115 impact-investing firms across different geographies. Emails were sent to investors associated with each of the impact-investing firms found in the database, out of which 32 replied with consent for a telephonic or in-person interview.
Findings
The significant findings presented in the paper are the following. First, this study shows the impact-investing selection process model. The four major steps in the selection process are context, investment focus, venture analysis and decision. In each step, social values and missions become the defining characteristics of the selection process. Second, the findings also discuss the typologies of impact investors as a function of their selection approaches.
Practical implications
This paper discusses the impact investing strategy among social enterprises. It provides a framework for impact investing among investee social enterprises. As an impact investing professional, one learns investment strategy through this paper.
Social implications
Impact investing is a growing field. It is believed that impact investing could greatly impact sustainable development goals, climate change goals and help in inclusive development. This study helps to further understand impact investing process and hopes to help social enterprises and impact investors make a better match, thereby, creating a greater overall social and environmental impact.
Originality/value
This study helps both practitioners and academics to understand the complexity of impact investing. This study helps develop heuristics that impact investors may use to make investments. This study provides a framework for investing, which the impact investing firms may use to invest.
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Kelsey M. Taylor and Eugenia Rosca
Previous literature on sustainable supply chain management has largely adopted an instrumental view of stakeholder management and has focused on understanding the effect of…
Abstract
Purpose
Previous literature on sustainable supply chain management has largely adopted an instrumental view of stakeholder management and has focused on understanding the effect of powerful stakeholders who have a more decisive influence on an organization's supply chain decisions. Social enterprises have emerged as organizations that often aim to create impact by integrating marginalized stakeholders into their operations and supply chains. This study examines the trade-offs that social enterprises experience due to their moral stance toward stakeholder engagement, evidenced in their commitment to serving marginalized stakeholders, as well as the responses adopted to these trade-offs.
Design/methodology/approach
The study follows a theory elaboration approach through a multiple case study design. The authors draw on insights from stakeholder theory and use the empirical insights to expand current constructs and relationships in a novel empirical context. Based on an in-depth analysis of primary and secondary qualitative data on ten social enterprises, the authors examine how these organizations integrate marginalized stakeholders into various roles in their operations.
Findings
When integrating marginalized customers, suppliers and employees, social enterprises face affordability, reliability and efficiency trade-offs. Each trade-off represents conflicts between the organization's needs and the needs of marginalized stakeholders. In response to these trade-offs, social enterprises choose to internalize the costs through slack creation or vertical integration or externalize the costs to stakeholders. The ability to externalize is contingent on the growth orientation of the organization and the presence of like-minded B2B (Business-to-Business) customers. These responses reflect whether organizations accept the trade-offs at the expense of one or more stakeholders or if they avoid the trade-offs and find mutually beneficial solutions.
Originality/value
Building on the empirical insights, the authors elaborate on stakeholder theory with a focus on the integration of marginalized stakeholders by emphasizing a moral justification for stakeholder engagement, identifying the nature of the underlying trade-offs which can arise when various stakeholder needs are in conflict and examining the contingencies affecting organizational responses to these trade-offs.
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Wei Li, Huan Liu and Yingshi Chen
This study aims to measure social enterprises’ (SEs’) social objectives under the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework, and explore the impact of SEs’…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to measure social enterprises’ (SEs’) social objectives under the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework, and explore the impact of SEs’ social objectives on their choices of legal forms.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used semi-structured questionnaires followed up by field interviews and observations of the sampled SEs. The survey sample includes 80 participants of Social Entrepreneurs Stars Competition in Zhejiang Province of China. The authors conduct content analysis to measure the objectives of SEs. The authors also perform descriptive analysis, chi-square test and regression analysis on the data.
Findings
The findings confirm the theoretical discussions that SEs’ choices of legal forms reflect SEs’ strategies toward achieving social objectives. Similar to certain countries, some SEs in China register as nonprofit entities to concentrate on nonprofitable sustainability objectives, while others register as commercial enterprises or hybrid organizations to generate profits. However, some SEs focus on profitable non-sustainability issues and fail to prioritize social objectives over economic objectives. There are positive effects of social entrepreneurs’ background similarity and negative effects of social entrepreneurs’ educational level on their SEs’ choices to register as commercial enterprises.
Research limitations/implications
Due to the small size and nonrepresentative sample this study is based on, the findings need be further tested by a larger sample. SEs in different service domains rely on different types of financial resources (Mair et al., 2012; Doherty et al., 2014). In future research, the model can be expanded to test the effects of service domains and types of financial sources on SEs’ choices of legal forms.
Practical implications
To encourage more societal resources being allocated toward achieving the United Nations’ SDGs, policymakers and SE certification programs are recommended to explicitly incorporate sustainability objectives into the evaluation standards and supportive policies for SEs. Social entrepreneurs who aim to balance the social and economic objectives in their business are suggested to target the population with whom they share similar community background. Training or consulting programs for social entrepreneurs are suggested to provide advice tailored to their socio-economic background and personal experiences.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ this study is the first quantitative analysis to identify factors that associate with SEs’ choice of legal forms in China. The authors developed new instruments to measure SEs’ social objectives and service targets, access to financial resources and social entrepreneurs’ social-economic backgrounds.
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Kamran Razmdoost and Leila Alinaghian
The adoption of social procurement, the emerging practice of using a firm's spending power to generate social value, requires buying firms to navigate conflicts of institutional…
Abstract
Purpose
The adoption of social procurement, the emerging practice of using a firm's spending power to generate social value, requires buying firms to navigate conflicts of institutional logics. Adopting an institutional work perspective, this study aims to investigate how buying firms change their existing procurement institutions to adopt and advance social procurement.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted an in-depth case study of a social procurement initiative in the UK. This case study comprised of 16 buying firms that were actively participating in the social procurement initiative at the time of data collection (2020–2021). The data were largely captured through a set of 41 semi-structured interviews.
Findings
Four types of institutional work were observed: reducing institutional conflicts, crossing institutional boundaries, legitimising institutional change and spreading the new institutional logic. These different types of institutional work appeared in a sequential way.
Originality/value
This study contributes to various strands of literature investigating the role of procurement in generating value and benefits within societies, adopting an institutional lens to investigate the buying firms' purposeful actions to change procurement institutions. Secondly, this study complements the existing literature investigating the conflicts of institutional logics by illustrating the ways firms address such institutional conflicts when adopting and advancing social procurement. Finally, this work contributes to the recently emerging research on institutional work that examines the creation and establishment of new institutions by considering the existing procurement institutions in the examination of institutional work.
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Kun Zhang, Xiu-e Zhang and Xuejiao Xu
Hypocrisy often observed in the social responsibility practices of commercial enterprises is more likely to occur in social enterprises. However, this issue has received little…
Abstract
Purpose
Hypocrisy often observed in the social responsibility practices of commercial enterprises is more likely to occur in social enterprises. However, this issue has received little research attention. This study explores, from a consumer perspective, the formation of perceived hypocrisy and its impact on the cognitive legitimacy of social enterprises.
Design/methodology/approach
This research conducted two experiments, and data were collected from 515 subjects in China to test the proposed hypotheses.
Findings
Behavioral inconsistency in social enterprises leads to consumers' perceived hypocrisy. The higher the perceived hypocrisy towards social enterprises, the weaker their cognitive legitimacy of social enterprises. At a lower level of inconsistency, the perceived hypocrisy of social enterprises was lower than that of commercial enterprises. Egoistic attribution to prosocial behavior moderated the negative effect of perceived hypocrisy on cognitive legitimacy. The stronger the egoistic attribution, the greater is the negative effect of perceived hypocrisy on the cognitive legitimacy of social enterprises.
Practical implications
Social entrepreneurs should be acutely aware of the harmful effects of hypocrisy on social enterprises. Social enterprises should not exaggerate their propaganda or be consistent with their words and actions.
Originality/value
This study innovatively analyzes the damage to the cognitive legitimacy of social enterprises caused by the hypocrisy that tends to occur in commercial enterprises and argues from the consumer viewpoint. These findings enrich the perspective on exploring social enterprise legitimacy.
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Annachiara Longoni, Davide Luzzini, Madeleine Pullman, Stefan Seuring and Dirk Pieter van Donk
This paper aims to provide a starting point to discuss how social enterprises can drive systemic change in terms of social impact through operations and supply chain management.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to provide a starting point to discuss how social enterprises can drive systemic change in terms of social impact through operations and supply chain management.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper reviews existing literature and the four papers in this special issue and develops a conceptual framework of how social enterprises and their supply chains create social impact and further enable systematic change.
Findings
Our paper finds that social impact and systemic change can be shaped by social enterprises at three different levels of analysis (organization, supply chain and context) and through three enablers (cognitive shift, stakeholder collaboration and scalability). Such dimensions are used to position current literature and to highlight new research directions.
Originality/value
This paper proposes a novel understanding of operations and supply chain management in social enterprises intended as catalysts for systemic change. Based on this premise we distinguish different practices and stakeholders to be considered when studying social impact at different levels. The conceptual framework introduced in the paper provides a new pathway for future research and debate by scholars engaged at the intersection of social impact, sustainable operations and supply chain management.
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This study systematically assesses and empirically examines the research question: How do social skills influence resource acquisition and social performance? Specifically, this…
Abstract
Purpose
This study systematically assesses and empirically examines the research question: How do social skills influence resource acquisition and social performance? Specifically, this study applies RBV theory from strategy to link social skills, resource conditions and the performance of social enterprises.
Design/methodology/approach
For this, we surveyed social enterprises in Korea to collect data and used SPSS 18.0 for hierarchical regression analysis.
Findings
In the Korean context, first, the results show that all social skills of social entrepreneurs are positively related to social performance. Second, among independent variables, self-promotion is positively associated with financial support and expressiveness is positively associated with marketing support. However, the rest of the independent variables have no significance. Finally, obtaining financial support from their partner mediates the relationship between self-promotion and social ventures' social performance, and obtaining marketing support from their partner mediates the relationship between expressiveness and social ventures' social performance.
Originality/value
This study provides two contributions. First, this is the first study to apply and test the RBV systematically and empirically in the context of social enterprises. Second, the results suggest that social skills and support types are important to social value creation.
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This paper explores attempts to deliver socioeconomic benefit by developing social enterprise within the public sector supply chain.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper explores attempts to deliver socioeconomic benefit by developing social enterprise within the public sector supply chain.
Design/methodology/approach
A case study approach is adopted which focusses on the implementation of public procurement policy intended to support social entrepreneurs (SEs) in the delivery of social care in Scotland. Socio-technical systems theory (STST) is adopted as a lens through which to explore the case.
Findings
While acknowledging the contextual limits of the case study, the empirical findings recognise partial implementation of the measures intended to develop social entrepreneurship in the supply chain. The results, however, suggest that both the engagement levels of SEs and the expected socio economic benefits are yet to accrue fully.
Social implications
The paper concludes that in order to achieve the expected social benefits further progress is required in engaging SEs in formal collaborations with larger, potentially for profit, organisations and also in their increased involvement in the design and commissioning of public services.
Originality/value
The innovative, cross-sectional research design uses a survey based, gap analysis to provide a nuanced comparison between the views of local authority procurement officers and the opinions prevalent within social enterprise care providers and thereby to assesses the effectiveness of public policy.
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