How and When Socially Entrepreneurial Nonprofit Organizations Benefit From Adopting Social Alliance Management Routines to Manage Social Alliances?

Abstract

Social alliance is defined as the collaboration between for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Building on the insights derived from the resource-based theory, we develop a conceptual framework to explain how socially entrepreneurial nonprofit organizations (SENPOs) can improve their social alliance performance by adopting strategic alliance management routines. We test our framework using the data collected from 203 UK-based SENPOs in the context of cause-related marketing campaign-derived social alliances. Our results confirm a positive relationship between social alliance management routines and social alliance performance. We also find that relational mechanisms, such as mutual trust, relational embeddedness, and relational commitment, mediate the relationship between social alliance management routines and social alliance performance. Moreover, our findings suggest that different types of social alliance motivation can influence the impact of social alliance management routines on different types of the relational mechanisms. In general, we demonstrate that SENPOs can benefit from adopting social alliance management routines and, in addition, highlight how and when the social alliance management routines-social alliance performance relationship might be shaped. Our study offers important academic and managerial implications, and points out future research directions.

The Transformation from Traditional Nonprofit Organizations to Social Enterprises: An Institutional Entrepreneurship Perspective

“…Our analysis suggests that institutional entrepreneurs tend to develop systematic approaches to manage this cross-sector alliance relationship. These findings are in line with recent research on managing the relationship between traditional NPOs and for-profit organizations (e.g., Le Pennec and Raufflet 2018;Liu et al 2018). As it is easier and more cost-effective to expand the current business partnership scope or start a new commercial arrangement with existing for-profit organization partners than find new ones (Al-Tabbaa et al 2019), traditional NPOs should focus on developing long-term cross-sector alliance relationships.…”

“…The second type of institutional work is to establish a business partnership with for-profit organizations. This reflects the movements to establish cross-sector alliances between traditional NPOs with for-profit organizations (e.g., Liu et al 2018;Sakarya et al 2012). In these relationships, traditional NPOs can obtain financial support from for-profit organizations.…”

Examining alliance management capabilities in cross-sector collaborative partnerships

“…First, we respond to a need to investigate the nature and dynamics of alliance capabilities when applied within the NBC domain (Austin & Seitanidi, 2012b;Liu et al, 2018;Murphy et al, 2012). This is a distinct setting (compared to B2B alliance) because the partners involved, who come together to achieve collective non-profit objectives (Le Ber & Branzei, 2010), are fundamentally different in their culture and institutional logics: 'market' logic vs 'public good' logic (Arya & Salk, 2006).…”

“…Recently, scholars have paid some attention to the relevance of these capabilities within the cross-sector collaboration setting (e.g., Alonso & Andrews, 2018;Dentoni et al, 2016;Liu et al, 2018). However, central to these attempts is the assumption that AMC are universally applicable; perceived as a contextfree construct.…”

Strategic Alliances in Firm-Centric and Collective Contexts: Implications for Indigenous Entrepreneurship

“…These new forms of SAs that engage partners other than for-profit firms, including governments and civil sector organizations, often do so for more than just economic reasons (Cordoba et al 2017;Kopka et al 2014). This observation has shifted study to new contextual and disciplinary vistas previously untapped, such as networks, communities, not-for-profit organizations, hybrid organizations, and Indigenous entrepreneurship (Quélin et al 2017;Liu et al 2016).…”