Going It Alone Won’t Work! The Relational Imperative for Social Innovation in Social Enterprises

Abstract

Shifts in the philosophy of the ''state'' and a growing emphasis on the ''Big Society'' have placed an increasing onus on a newly emerging organizational form, social enterprises, to deliver innovative solutions to ease societal issues. However, the question of how social enterprises manage the process of social innovation remains largely unexplored. Based on insights from both in-depth interviews and a quantitative empirical study of social enterprises, this research examines the role of stakeholder relationships in supporting the process of social innovation within social enterprises. We find that social enterprises are adept at working with their stakeholders in the ideation stage of social innovation. In contrast, they often fail to harness knowledge and expertise from their partners during the social innovation implementation phase. Consequently, we propose a social innovationstakeholder relationship matrix that provides social enterprises in particular with insight for developing stakeholder relationships to achieve their social innovation missions.

Responsible innovation by social entrepreneurs: an exploratory study of values integration in innovations

“…In this article, we present the findings by addressing the social enterprise in each case that is mentioned as opposed to the individual entrepreneur. The main reason for presenting the results in this way is to move away from the problematic narrative of the heroic individual (Dacin, Dacin, and Tracey 2011) and instead acknowledge the fact that it is the collective of individuals in the social enterprise (as well as the eco-system around the organisation) who develop and implement the social innovation (Dacin, Dacin, and Tracey 2011;Dufays and Huybrechts 2014;Phillips, Alexander, and Lee 2017).…”

CEOs' reputation, quality management and environmental innovation: The roles of stakeholder pressure and resource commitment

“…In addition, the stakeholder theory suggests that different stakeholders can exert pressure on firms to alter their behaviour by adopting new work practices and routines (Durugbo & Amankwah‐Amoah, 2019; Eesley & Lenox, 2006; Freeman, 2005). It has been established that, by responding to stakeholder demands in product or service development, firms can achieve improved innovation outcomes (e.g., Vargo & Lusch, 2004) and firm performance (Ommen, Blut, Backhaus, & Woisetschläger, 2016; Phillips, Alexander, & Lee, 2017). For example, pressures from stakeholders can contribute to organisational efforts by offering new ideas and suggestions which ultimately help the organisation improve product design and processes and eliminate inefficient practices (Ommen et al, 2016).…”

A decision model approach for determining social innovation potential of technological projects

“…Furthermore, qualitative analyses were used by many scholars (Ballard et al, 2017; Caroli, Fracassi, Maiolini, & Pulino, 2018; Herrera, 2016; Martins, Braga, Braga, & Ferreira, 2020; Shier & Handy, 2016). However, the social innovation studies using quantitative methods are not sufficient in the related literature except for statistical analysis (Furmańska‐Maruszak & Sudolska, 2016; Phillips, Alexander, & Lee, 2019; Repo & Matschoss, 2020; Schmidthuber, Piller, Bogers, & Dennis, 2019; Segarra‐Oña, Peiró‐Signes, Albors‐Garrigós, & De Miguel‐Molina, 2017).…”