The inter-organizational cooperation (IOC) is based on the use of consensual ways to seek a common goal. It requires a strategic vision of organizations to enable purchases and allocate resources to improve the performance and create learning. In addition, IOC may be able to pool resources, skills and values looking for maintaining competitiveness. The organizations must develop ‘Relational Capabilities’ (RC) for their cooperative success. Such skills are learning, involving structural interaction, development of specific assets and cooperative behavior. Authors present a typology of dimensions and characteristics to understanding the construct. From these aspects, the research proposes a theoretical framework for understanding and allowing the assessment of the RC construct, in the IOC. To elaborate it, the studies mentioned above were regrouped by similarities, in the pursuit of joint and complementary, to develop a new framework of components from the dimensions proposed. The results were five dimensions: coordination, cultural, knowledge, technology and coadaptation, which were formed by components. It is possible to believe that the evaluation of RC in inter-organizational relationships can identify factors that influence the success of alliances that should be improved or developed by empirical disclosure of the results. Therefore, the partnership objectives are met as full as possible.

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PurposeSocial innovation has been attracting attention in the literature and the practice field due to its intention to create social value. However, the social innovation process is still poorly studied and is marked by several disagreements in the existing models, often built from data coming from developed countries. So, the focus of this study is to answer the following research question: how is the social innovation process configured in a developing context?Design/methodology/approachThe study investigated three cases of Brazilian social innovation processes through a qualitative approach. The authors also use the institutional levels perspectives to analyse the cases.FindingsThe main findings indicate that the social innovation process comprises five phases and occurs between the micro, meso and macro institutional levels. Besides, the social innovation process relies on the participation of different partners, in a non-sequential process, with the possibility of returning from one stage to another and is evaluated continuously over time.Practical implicationsThis study may be useful for social entrepreneurs and their teams in organisations that generate social innovations (such as social enterprises) to understand how well-established initiatives have organised themselves over time. Public policymakers may also use the insights provided to create more favourable environments to create new social innovation initiatives and expand the existing ones.Originality/valueThe characteristics of the social innovation process revealed in this study contributes to the advancement of the area, mainly because it considers the perspective of institutional levels and is based on data from a developing country.

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