Social innovation success factors: hospitality and tourism social enterprises

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to contribute to the existing literature on social enterprises and business model innovation. Particularly, it sheds some light on those factors that turn a social innovation initiative into a success, both in terms of meeting social needs and achieving economic sustainability. Design/methodology/approach By using a grounded theory approach, an inductive comparative case study is conducted. Two work integration social enterprises in the hospitality and tourism sector are selected. Both companies are located in Barcelona (Spain) under the same legal regulation and economic situation and initially run a manufacturing business. Due to the economic crisis they were forced to reinvent themselves to survive. Data were collected from different sources and coded using content analysis procedures. Findings Results indicate that three factors, namely, value proposition, appropriate market research and stakeholder involvement, heavily contributed to firm’s success, corroborating previous studies. Furthermore, our study reveals that social need pressures and managerial trust on employees are additional factors that drive social business model innovation. Practical implications Changes in the demand, the rules governing the market or economic downturns are external drivers for demand-pull innovations. In such context, firms need to reformulate their business models if they wish to survive. Acknowledging the factors that help firms overcome these obstacles is of great interest for both academics and entrepreneurs. Originality/value Social innovation in business models is a topic still poorly defined in the literature, yet, its boundaries to other fields are still fuzzy. This paper aims to fulfill this gap by presenting the theoretical domain in which this topic fits in and evidencing those successful factors that should be considered when designing and implementing a business model innovation which may help other firms facing a similar process.

Are green hotels suitable for the development of entrepreneurship in tourism?

“…The primary goal of social entrepreneurship is to create social and economic values, and not only to make a profit for the owners of enterprises and other stakeholders. Sustainability of social enterprises depends on the ability of an enterprise to cover its total business costs and obtain an adequate market share [33]. Social entrepreneurship is not a new type of entrepreneurship, but it deals exclusively with environmental issues [16].…”

Business models in tourism: a review and research agenda

“…In particular, contributions address the challenges of integrating sustainability in destination business model design (Mihalič, Žabkar, & Cvelbar, 2012;Scheepens, Vogtländer, & Brezet, 2016) and hospitality management practices (Bohdanowicz & Zientara, 2009;Høgevold, Svensson, & Padin, 2015;Sarkar & Sinha, 2015). Contributions focusing on innovation investigated adoption and commercialization of new products and services by means of improved and new business models (Alegre & Berbegal-Mirabent, 2016;Hojman & Hunter-Jones, 2012;Huang, Lee, & Lee, 2009;Rusu, 2016;Souto, 2015). Side topics explored by few authors include the role of ownership structures at festivals (Andersson & Getz, 2009), competing taxation systems between destinations and online travel companies (Schiller, 2011), and changes in consumer behavior stemming from collaborative consumption (Kathan, Matzler, & Veider, 2016).…”

“…Related sustainability efforts and benefits mainly referred to maintaining or improving the (ecological) environment for future generations (Mihalič et al, 2012) and different aspects of economic growth. This growth benefits residents if it stems from ecofriendly destination development (Sarkar & Sinha, 2015), inclusion of disadvantaged residents (Alegre & Berbegal-Mirabent, 2016), builds upon collaborative consumption (Kathan et al, 2016) or contributes to multiple sustainability aspects at once (Mihalič et al, 2012;Scheepens et al, 2016). Finally, despite value (co-)creation for specific customers being a focus of business model research, only two studies highlighted their role and benefits in tourism contexts: Koukopoulos and Styliaras (2013) discuss new tourist experiences stemming from the use of smartphone apps and Pine and Gilmore (2016) discuss how customer experience should be incorporated in "modern" business offerings.…”

Innovative low-cost strategy and firm performance of restaurants

“…Additionally, Hilman and Kaliappen (2014) mentioned that innovation in the hospitality industry allows the organization to achieve economies of scale, reducing the cost and gain market share. Alegre and Berbegal-Mirabent (2016) found management, core and support process in the restaurant industry that requires innovations in managing the costs. Acquaah (2011) find that low-cost strategies have a strong positive effect on performance; Acquaah and Agyapong (2015), Dadzie et al (2013) and Agyapong and Boamah (2013) found that strategic cost leadership does not extract strong effects on firm performance.…”