Social Enterprise Innovation in Context: Stakeholder Influence through Contestation

Abstract

Social enterprises are the products of the social, cultural, commercial, and political expectations of the innovation’s range of stakeholders, not solely the vision of the social entrepreneur(s). The power of stakeholders to influence the development of an innovation is drawn from their salience and the resources, access, and/or legitimacy that their support would provide. In this way, the actions of social entrepreneurs represent the interests of communities and it is through processes of resistance, negotiation, and collaboration that the actions of social enterprises become the manifestations of collective social processes. This paper draws on the development of a nascent social enterprise in New Zealand to demonstrate how the effects of its context ultimately shaped its innovative business model. Using an ethnographic methodology, the development of the business model and the partnership through which it formed was examined by the author as a central actor as it unfolded. The case study serves as an illustrative example of the ways in which differing expectations, beliefs, and logics of stakeholders induces particular decisions to be made about the design, resourcing, and strategy of the venture.

Firms with benefits: A systematic review of responsible entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility literature

“…Although some literature on responsible entrepreneurs and the interplay with their stakeholders can be found in our corpus (e.g., Muhammad et al, 2016;Newth, 2016;Kimmitt et al, 2016) including literature specifically focusing on livelihoods (Laeis & Lemke, 2016), the CSR literature suggests that much more work in this realm may be undertaken (see Table 6). We hypothesize that particularly research on the interaction between responsible entrepreneurs and NGOs may be of interest as well on (possibly innovative) approaches responsible entrepreneurs undertake to gain a social license to operate.…”

Social Enterprise as a Catalyst for Sustainable Local and Regional Development

“…Social enterprises emerge and maintain company and social services through the social innovation process [13,15,37,38]. The social entrepreneur and social entrepreneurship constitute the majority of social innovations, that is, the innovative thoughts and decision-making process for social purposes [37,[39][40][41].…”

“…The achievement of social purposes has the role of incentive, covering the economic aspect, on the members of the social enterprise [15,[60][61][62]. The trust of governance is based on transparency, reliability, and democracy [63].…”

“…The social enterprise mobilizes resources by forming relational assets with external stakeholders [15,73,74]. Social ownership involves the collaboration between governance and the community [21,75,76].…”

“…Among others, social enterprise has recently emerged along with social innovation processes, or social entrepreneurship [11,12]. Social enterprise is distinct from other organizations; it involves social entrepreneurship that concentrates on individual motivation and leadership and has a dual social and economic purpose [13][14][15]. Social enterprise is characterized by a business orientation and innovative approach focused on the delivery of social benefits through trading to ensure the financial sustainability of the organizations concerned [11,16].…”