Packs, Troops and Herds: Prosocial Cooperatives and Innovation in the New Normal

Abstract

Prosocial organizations are emerging to tackle the effects of a New Normal. As they navigate its fragile and liquid institutional membranes, they prioritize cooperative forms of governance. These forms allow for collaboration and democratic decision‐making necessary for the development of innovative solutions in this new context. At the same time, the high coordination costs of cooperatives lead to significant market pressures. Therefore, understanding when and under what conditions these new cooperatives innovate and strive is important as it provides insight into whether and how these ventures can become a viable alternative in this changing landscape. Using configurational analyses of organizational enablers leading to innovation in 40 entrepreneurial cooperatives, we identify three approaches: Attentive Pack, Eclectic Troop, and Wandering Herd, showing that innovative outcomes can indeed emerge under traditional cooperative features emphasizing collectivism. However, the pursuit of higher novelty requires a shift to more individualistic, business‐as‐usual, approaches. The New Normal does indeed enhance entrepreneurial activity, but of a different kind comprising novel sets of antecedents and outcomes, which we show can easily become the new dominant form of venturing required in this new context.

Impact Measurement in an Emerging Social Sector: Four Novel Approaches

“…Latin-America has only recently allowed the formalization of "for-benefit enterprises", led by Argentina and Colombia. Despite having a very active social sector (Muñoz et al, 2019), Chile (at the time of this writing) has not agreed on relevant legislative and regulative arrangements to support its social enterprises and social entrepreneurs. The first, and only so far, government support program for social ventures including impact measurement was only launched in August 2018 (Corfo, 2018), which only supports six incubators and 40 social entrepreneurs.…”

“…This is in line with Barman and Maclndoe's (2012) approach in dealing with the complexity of outcome measurement. Our study focuses on the nascent social sector in Chile (Muñoz, Kimmitt & Dimov, 2019), where we surveyed 152 social entrepreneurs. Using configurational comparative methods, we analyzed combinations of nine internal and external factors that might enable SIM formalization.…”

Managing Technological, Sociopolitical, and Institutional Change in the New Normal

“…Some of the more extreme populist groups have even questioned the societal value or legitimacy of the private firms with a for‐profit objective, with an increasingly positive reception among parts of the population in some countries. In turn, the preference for the development of more ‘social’ forms of organizations, having broader non‐profit objectives as cooperatives or family business, has grown (Munoz et al, 2020).…”

“…The second paper, by Munoz et al (2020), examined the relationship between prosocial cooperatives (co‐ops) and innovation in the New Normal environment. The authors identified three cooperative forms of governance: The attention pack, the eclectic troop, and the wondering herd, that allow for collaboration and more democratic decision‐making necessary for the development of innovative solutions in the faster moving New Normal landscape, characterized by vastly improved communication and collaboration technologies.…”

How Family's Support of Perseverance in Creative Efforts Influences the Originality of Children's Drawing During the Period of COVID-19 Pandemic?

“…In addition, the pursuit of a high level of originality requires a shift to more individualistic tendencies (Munoz et al, 2020 ) and deviation from routines and the status quo (Zhou and George, 2001 ; Anderson et al, 2014 ). However, individuals with prosocial motivations are more likely to think from the perspectives of others and deviate less from the routine (Beersma and De Dreu, 2005 ), which may limit their divergent thinking and lead to cognition closure (Miron-Spektor and Beenen, 2015 ).…”