Social innovations in outsourcing: An empirical investigation of impact sourcing companies in India

Abstract

Impact sourcing -the practice of bringing digitally-enabled outsourcing jobs to marginalized individuals -is an important emerging social innovation in the outsourcing industry. The impact sourcing model of delivering Information Technology and Business Process Outsourcing (IT-BPO) services not only seeks to deliver business value for clients, but is also driven by an explicit social mission to help marginalized communities enjoy the benefits of globalization. This dual focus has led to the ambitious claim that social value creation can be integral to (and not always by-products of) innovative IT-BPO models. Given the relative newness of the impact sourcing business model there is scarce research about how impact sourcing companies emerge and the process through which entrepreneurs build and operate such companies. This paper draws on a qualitative study of seven Indian impact sourcing companies and develops a process model of the individual-level motivational triggers of impact sourcing entrepreneurship, the entrepreneurial actions underpinning different phases of venture creation and the positive institutional-level influences on impact sourcing. The paper argues that since deeply personalized values are central to the creation and development of impact sourcing companies, the business model may not be easy to replicate. The analysis highlights an intensive period of embedding and robust alliances with local partners as crucial for the scalability and sustainability of the impact sourcing business model. It also emphasizes the role of 'social' encoding and mimicry in determining the extent to which impact sourcing companies are able to retain their commitment to marginalized communities.

Scaling up social innovation: a meta-synthesis

“…In some cases, the social business models are difficult local adaptation and present problems in maintaining the environment, as in cases of IT service outsourcing in India, presented by Sandeep and Ravishankar (2015).…”

“…This can be discussed in two parts; the first of them is the adaptation of SI to the growing market and the second is related to the increased possibility of creating social value through the generation of jobs in the environment to rely on the SI the dissemination stage, as the case of IT outsourcing companies that led jobs for poor rural populations of India (Sandeep & Ravishankar, 2015), or by hiring local suppliers.…”

Entrepreneurial impact sourcing: a conceptual framework of social and commercial institutional logics

“…Interestingly, most of the firms profiled in Lacity et al () were primarily commercial value oriented in terms of their mission despite also promoting social impacts such as bringing jobs back home and rural economic development. On the other hand, Sandeep & Ravishankar () find that impact sourcing providers innovated similarly (by locating delivery centres in rural areas of India) but came at it from a mostly social value creation locus triggered by spirituality, guilt and compassion.…”

“…First, while we based the four dimensions within our framework on entrepreneurship literature, we may have missed other important dimensions of impact sourcing providers that meaningfully characterize these firms on the two logics. For example, although entrepreneurship literature generally has found no consensus on the utility of individual‐level variables in differentiating social and commercial entrepreneurship (Dacin et al ., ), recent work on impact sourcing suggests that individual‐level motivational triggers could be important for impact sourcing venture creation (Sandeep & Ravishankar, ). Second, as we suggest in the succeeding texts, it is possible that the four dimensions are inherently related to each other and in complex ways.…”

“…Within this broadened purview, a new breed of innovative and entrepreneurial outsourcing service provider firms with social and development aims has emerged (e.g. Sandeep & Ravishankar, ; Sandeep & Ravishankar, ). Operating under a broader social entrepreneurship and innovation umbrella (Sandeep & Ravishankar, ), these firms attempt to enable and foster what is generally referred to as impact sourcing.…”