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This study aims to examine whether the determinant factors of innovations broadly accepted for traditional firms – the personal traits of the entrepreneurs, the features of the firms and the environment – also influence innovation in social economy companies.

Based on a sample carried out between small cooperatives and worker‐owned companies – which are the most representative legal forms in the Spanish social economy collective – the authors develop an empirical study using a logistic regression model.

The results show that, on the whole, innovation in these kinds of firm seems to be determined by the same set of variables as in the case of traditional firms. In addition to this, the present research reveals that the influence of these variables on entrepreneurial innovations depends on the kind of innovation. Finally, the findings also give evidence about the existence of an inter‐dependence among the different types of innovation in social economy firms.

The study is limited to small firms within the Spanish industrial and service sectors, but provides future researchers with further replication opportunities.

Taking into account the relevant contribution of social economy companies to the Spanish economy, and having noted the scarce number of studies about innovation in the social economy sector, this research offers a significant contribution by specifying the innovative behavior of social economy firms in Spain.

This paper aims to empirically examine the mediating role of knowledge acquisition between social capital and innovation for firms located in science and technology parks (STPs).

Partial least squares offers the primary statistic technique for assessing survey data collected from 214 Spanish tenants.

Knowledge acquisition fully mediates the relationship between social capital and firm innovation. Moreover, social capital at the firm level has a significant influence on both knowledge acquisition and innovation.

Further research should include more independent variables to understand the complex phenomenon of firm innovation.

Tenant firms in STPs must develop strategic management tactics for their interfirm relations to acquire and exploit key resources such as knowledge. For specialized firms, close social interactions in specific contexts can enhance both knowledge acquisition and innovation to compensate for their resource constraints.

By demonstrating the impact of social capital on knowledge acquisition and innovation in the specific context of STPs, whose artificial environment encourages and promotes close social interactions among tenants, this article overcomes previous and contradictory findings regarding the relationship between social capital and innovation. A key element is the contingent and mediating role of knowledge acquisition. Finally, this study considers social capital at the firm level as a multidimensional, second‐order latent construct that includes structural, relational and cognitive aspects simultaneously.

In the discussion groups subjects will be taken up which are not dealt with in the lectures. The subjects to be taken up in the discussion groups of each week and the assignments relating thereto will be announced well in advance of the meetings.

Several studies have investigated the factors affecting innovation in medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) at different levels. However, research into the characteristics of the entrepreneur (individual level) in social economy enterprises (SEE), and the relationship to innovation is scarce. The purpose of this paper is to build upon previous innovation literature to analyse SEE innovativeness.

This paper empirically analyses data from 193 face-to-face interviews with the founder/owner/managing director of small (zero to nine employees) SEE in Andalucía, Spain. A semi-structured questionnaire was produced using the literature review. To ensure the reliability of the data collection and the consistency of the results, several researchers reviewed the codification and analysis of the answers. Quantitative analyses were performed on the data, including descriptive statistical analysis and multivariate analysis (factorial for innovativeness construct validation, multiple regression, cluster, and discriminant). The software SPSS IBM PASSW Statistics 18 was used.

Considering the individual factors, it was determined that a proactive attitude towards innovation and a degree-level education were positively related to SEE innovativeness and that these were the most significant factors considered. The identification of attitude towards innovation was perhaps not surprising; one might expect a relationship between proactiveness and innovativeness. Furthermore, this result is consistent with the positive impact exerted by entrepreneurial characteristics, such as entrepreneurial confidence and adaptability, or SME entrepreneurs’ proactive personality and prospector strategy orientation towards their firms’ innovation.

This study has a number of limitations. First, the study is an exploratory study of innovativeness in SEE in a limited geographical area. Second, the fact that the interviews were conducted using a semi-structured questionnaire limited the opportunities for obtaining more detailed information regarding the factors affecting innovativeness in SEE. Third, other variables may have been used as control variables, such as firm age. Sector was used as control variable and it was found as not significant. Fourth, other statistical analyses, such as hierarchical linear modelling, would benefit the results, as different levels of analysis would be considered simultaneously. Fifth, other components of entrepreneurial orientation would render the results more complete.

The research findings suggest that SEE would benefit from degree-level people with proactive attitudes towards innovation. Clearly, attitude and education are important aspects of the individual's mindset. This study demonstrates that the mind sets of the owners of SEE, in terms of both education and attitude, positively impact innovativeness. At least in SEE, degree-level entrepreneurs with positive attitudes towards innovation run more innovative firms. The challenge for regional policy makers is to look beyond the formal education system to promote innovation skills programmes for social and economic impact.

This paper contributes to the entrepreneurship and innovation literature by identifying the importance of developing individual-level skills as well as formal education in order to foster innovation in SEEs.

This study aims to examine the dual effects of home country institutional forces (i.e. institutional support and institutional constraints) on the internationalization of private firms in emerging markets. By doing so, this study aims to examine the applicability of the two seemingly paradoxical views (i.e. the governmental promotion view and the institutional escapism view) in explaining private firms’ internationalization. Further, this study investigates how the effect of the home country institutional environment on firms’ internationalization is contingent upon firm characteristics.

A sample of Chinese private firms is used to examine the effect of home country institutions on internationalization.

Empirical findings suggest that both institutional support and institutional constraints promote the internationalization of private firms in emerging markets. Moreover, it is found that firm resources strengthen the effect of government support on internationalization. It is also found that firms’ business ties strengthen the effect of institutional constraint on internationalization, whereas firms’ political ties weaken the effect of institutional constraints on internationalization.

By adopting an integrated and comprehensive investigation of the dual effects of home country institutional environment in emerging markets on internationalization, this study provides evidence to the applicability of the two competing views (i.e. the governmental promotion view and the institutional escapism view) in relation to home country institutional effects on internationalization. In addition, this study examines how institutional effects vary across firms with different resources and social ties, thus extends understandings of the boundary conditions of the two institutional effects.

This paper reviews the evolution, current state and ongoing trends of the empirical literature on employee-owned firms (EOFs).

Using a structured literature review methodology, I analyze 280 empirical publications on EOFs published in English peer-reviewed academic journals over the 1970–2019 period.

Two generations (before and after 2001) of the EOF empirical literature are identified and characterized in terms of authors, journals, topics, methods, targets, relations to theoretical modeling and countries studied. Two research trends are structuring the current generation: one investigating diverse research questions engaging EOFs as emblematic forms of social economy, and the other comparing EOFs to conventional firms to offer insights mainly into the seminal question of the EOF relative rarity.

The sample studied does not take into account articles written in languages other than English and does not include books.

This article displays the first structured literature review of the EOF empirical literature.

Alternative enterprises – organizations that operate as a business while still also being driven by a social purpose – are sometimes owned by workers or other stakeholders, rather than shareholders. What role does ownership play in enabling alternative enterprises to prioritize substantively rational organizational values, like environmental sustainability and social equity, over instrumentally rational ones, like profit maximization? We situate this question at the intersection of research on: (1) stakeholder governance and mission drift in both hybrid and collectivist-democratic organizations; and (2) varieties of ownership of enterprise. Though these literatures suggest that ownership affects the ability of alternative enterprises to maintain their social missions, the precise nature of this relationship remains under-theorized. Using the case of a global, social, and environmental values-based banking network, we suggest that alternative ownership is likely a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to combat mission drift in enterprises that have a legal owner. A supermajority of this network’s banks deploy alternative ownership structures; those operating with these structures are disproportionately associated with social movements, which imprint their values onto the banks. We show how alternative ownership acts through specific mechanisms to sustain enterprises’ missions, and we also trace how many of these mechanisms are endogenous to alternative ownership models. Finally, we find that ownership models vary in how well they enable the expression and maintenance of these social values. A ladder of mission-sustaining ownership models exists, whereby the dominance of substantive, non-instrumental values over operations and investment becomes increasingly robust as one moves up the rungs from mission-driven investor ownership to special shareholder and member-ownership models.

How does organisational mission affect the development of social entrepreneurship and social innovation? Based on the theoretical perspective of social innovation, the aim of this paper is to empirically analyse the impact of the organisation’s dual mission (social and economic) on social entrepreneurship and social innovation, as well as to discover the effect of the latter on the performance of organisations.

Using data from 213 social economy firms, the authors conduct an empirical test of hypotheses using structural equation modelling.

The empirical study shows that an organisation’s dual mission (social and economic) has a positive effect on social entrepreneurship. However, the results suggest that the creation of social innovations is based more on social dimensions than on the economic interest of companies. The results also confirm that companies willing to embark on social projects can develop new products or services that address social needs.

The findings not only supply empirical evidence that helps clarify the effects of economic and social missions on organisational performance but they also offer guidance to companies on the role of social innovation in strengthening organisations.

The aim of this study was to analyse the link between the values that govern the functioning of cooperatives and their sustainability. Furthermore, the authors propose that this relationship is mediated by AMO (ability, motivation and opportunity) practices, which generate different behaviours and attitudes in their employees, thus strengthening the message of sustainable management that the directors of this kind of companies aim to transmit.

This article presents a theoretical and empirical research model about the relationship between organisational values, AMO practices and sustainability in social economy firms. The proposed model was tested using the multivariate method of partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) with a sample of 124 cooperative companies. The information was gathered through a questionnaire with questions composed of measurement scales that had been previously validated by the reference literature.

This work empirically demonstrates that the perceived support, respect and responsibility values are strongly related to sustainability, and that ability and opportunity-enhancing practices mediate the association of perceived support and responsibility with the sustainability of cooperatives.

This work contributes to covering the lack of studies about which values support and impact the sustainability of organisations, and it provides information about the mediating role of certain AMO practices in the search for a more sustainable organisation, demonstrating that some practices are more relevant than others.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and develop a hierarchy of corporate social responsibility (CSR) dimensions and their interrelationships using interpretive structural modelling (ISM) methodology.

This research used ISM for framework development. ISM is, however, a sound method for developing insight into the collective understanding of the relationships between dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) identified from the literature review. The steps involved in the ISM technique are structural self-interaction matrix, reachability matrix, level partitions, developing the canonical matrix, classification of dimensions for CSR and formation of ISM.

The findings indicate that company size is the only key driver for the other dimensions of CSR and is hence placed at the very bottom of the ISM model. Above this, at Level II, the key dimensions are corporate governance, diversity and corporate profile. These act as mediating dimensions between company size and the topmost level (i.e. Level III), which comprises 15 dimensions including CSR.

Some limitations of this research indicate the need for further research. First, the proposed ISM model has only been conceptualised and has not been empirically tested using primary data. Future research is needed to validate the model in whole or part, to understand the perceived CSR of a company. Second, the methodology was limited to the use of ISM to model the CSR dimensions; it was not extended to fuzzy MICMAC analysis or to interpretive ranking.

The proposed ISM-based model for the identification and ranking of CSR dimensions and their interrelationships offers decision makers and practitioners a more convincing representation of the problems affecting the exploration of CSR dimensions. The utility of the proposed ISM method lies in imposing order and direction on the complexity of relationships among these dimensions, which will help top management and decision makers to better use their available resources in optimising their CSR practices. The framework allows policymakers to effectively incorporate these dimensions into their practising of CSR.

This is the first research on CSR to conceptualise a framework of causal interactions among its key dimensions using ISM methodology.