Learning,Innovation and Competitive Advantage in Not-for-Profit Aged Care Marketing: A Conceptual Model and Research Propositions

ABSTRACT

The rapid expansion and the increased commercialization of the elderly consumers market have forced not-for-profit organizations (NFPs) to adopt a competitive posture in their operations and to pursue innovative ways of delivering superior aged care to the target market. This paper attempts to model the antecedents of innovation-based competitive strategy in NFPs. Premised on the capability-based model of sustained competitive advantage and incorporating the emerging concept of social entrepreneurship, it is argued that entrepreneurial NFP organizations, in their mission to create social value to multiple stakeholders, build and nurture distinctive learning capabilities that enable them to formulate innovative strategies for superior aged care delivery. Key theoretical constructs within the model are explored and research propositions are presented.     

Social entrepreneurship as an essentially contested concept: Opening a new avenue for systematic future research

Social entrepreneurship has emerged as an active area of practice and research within the last three decades. Nevertheless, in spite of its growing popularity, scholars and practitioners are far from reaching a consensus as to what social entrepreneurship actually means. This has resulted in a number of different definitions and approaches within the field of social entrepreneurship. The purpose of this article is to shed light on the ongoing contestation of social entrepreneurship and to offer a novel conceptual understanding of the concept that can facilitate the development of systematic and structured future research. To this end, we analyze social entrepreneurship on the basis of the theory of essentially contested concepts, which was proposed by Walter Bryce Gallie in 1956. Building upon this theory, this article shows that social entrepreneurship can be regarded as an essentially contested concept and that a universal definition that would be accepted among contestant parties is hardly possible. Responding to this recognition, the article proposes the conceptualization of social entrepreneurship as a cluster concept, which can serve as a conceptual tool to help advancing social entrepreneurship as a coherent field of research despite its contested nature.     

Social Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics: Does Social Equal Ethical?

This editorial to the special issue addresses the often overlooked question of the ethical nature of social enterprises. The emerging social entrepreneurship literature has previously been dominated by enthusiasts who fail to critique the social enterprise, focusing instead on its distinction from economic entrepreneurship and potential in solving social problems. In this respect, we have found through the work presented herein that the relation between social entrepreneurship and ethics needs to be problematized. Further, we find that a range of conceptual lenses and methodological approaches is valuable as the social entrepreneurship field matures.     

Youth entrepreneurship in emerging economies: can family support help navigate institutional voids?

Abstract

Institutional voids plague entrepreneurship in emerging economies. In this paper, we investigate how the social structure of the family can enable young entrepreneurs to navigate the institutional voids and progress through the venturing process. Findings suggest that both institutional voids and family support have a significant effect on startup activities, and that family financial support helps absorb the negative influence of capital market voids. Our study begins to explain the relationship between institutional voids and family support, thereby contributing to the ongoing development of institutional theory in an emerging economy context and to the literature on family influences on entrepreneurship.     

The Social Entrepreneurship Zone

Social entrepreneurship is still in the developmental stage as a field of inquiry. In this article we introduce the concept of the social entrepreneurship zone. This new construct positions social entrepreneurship relative to the ways organizations plan to implement social change and the degrees to which they apply business practices to do so. Two new categories of organizations, social transformation entrepreneurial ventures and social improvement entrepreneurial ventures, reside in the social entrepreneurship zone. This categorization separates social entrepreneurial ventures into 2 distinct groups with their own unique set of characteristics. The social entrepreneurship zone construct should help researchers and other stakeholders better understand this emerging field so it can be further studied and developed.     

Social Interaction: A Determinant of Entrepreneurial Team Venture Success

An important issue to explain the success of new ventures is mostly ignored by the research of entrepreneurship: the social interaction within entrepreneurial teams. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of social interaction, which was originally developed for innovation teams in the field of entrepreneurship research and theory.The theoretical discussion proves if an adoption of the social interaction to the field of entrepreneurship is theoretically possible. Using the data of 159 German entrepreneurial teams, the effects of social interaction on new business success are empirically proven. The introduced measurement model, which consists of six dimensions, shows a high quality in the empirical test. The quality of the social interaction within entrepreneurial teams is crucial for the new venture success. An empirical comparison with the frequently used team conflicts confirm that the measurement of conflicts is not a sufficient substitute measurement for social interaction. Overall, the social interaction in entrepreneurial teams could be seen as an important but not only factor of business success.     

Internationalization and value orientation of entrepreneurial ventures—a Latin American perspective

Entrepreneurial ventures from Latin American emerging economies are underexplored on the current international entrepreneurship literature. This paper is aimed to contribute empirical evidence on entrepreneurial ventures from Latin American emerging economies and their internationalization and value orientation. Based on the 2009 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data, we found that institutional voids on Latin American emerging economies were a double-edge sword: on one hand, inefficient and unregulated markets make ventures from Latin American emerging economies encounter the liability of their country of origin; on the other hand, less active governments and absence of influential NGOs alternatively trigger more social entrepreneurial opportunities, with some of them across the national border. Some entrepreneurs from Latin American emerging economies have been active in exploiting those international social opportunities. International social entrepreneurship can be regarded as an alternative solution to social problems which governments, NGOs, or for-profit ventures fail to tackle on Latin American emerging economies.     

From grassroots to international markets: A qualitative study of marginalized entrepreneurs in India

Much of the growing literature on international entrepreneurship focuses on how positive circumstances, such as having prior international experience, business networks, or formal institutions lead to international entrepreneurial action and overlooks the role more challenging circumstances might play. In this study, we extend and refine challenge-based entrepreneurship theory to explore what influences international entrepreneurial action undertaken by marginalized entrepreneurs in an emerging economy. Despite widening economic and social disparities in emerging economies, little is known about entrepreneurs who have traditionally been “left behind.” Our findings suggest that these marginalized entrepreneurs have not only a set of liabilities but also advantages, including creative problem solving and perseverance, as well as local knowledge and networks. To spur the first-person international opportunity belief associated with international entrepreneurial action, an intermediary with resources and networks is needed to offset the liabilities. These intermediaries act as gatekeepers, helping some marginalized entrepreneurs but holding back others.     

A Model of Social Entrepreneurial Discovery

Social entrepreneurship activity continues to surge tremendously in market and economic systems around the world. Yet, social entrepreneurship theory and understanding lag far behind its practice. For instance, the nature of the entrepreneurial discovery phenomenon, a critical area of inquiry in general entrepreneurship theory, receives no attention in the specific context of social entrepreneurship. To address the gap, we conceptualize social entrepreneurial discovery based on an extension of corporate social responsibility into social entrepreneurship contexts. We develop a model that emphasizes mobilization and timing as underpinnings of social entrepreneurial discovery and offer distinct conceptual aspects and theoretic propositions instrumental to future social entrepreneurship research.     

Is international entrepreneurship a field? A bibliometric analysis of the literature (1989–2015)

The abundant academic literature on international entrepreneurship has attracted the attention of many researchers in various fields (international business, entrepreneurship, management, marketing, to mention a few). A debate has been opened on whether international entrepreneurship is indeed a field. In this article, we seek to contribute to this debate. We applied a bibliometric analysis to 567 articles on international entrepreneurship published during the 1989–February 2015 period. The main indices that this is an emerging field are as follows: a concentration of publications on central contributors and universities, key dates of social events, the creation of a journal dedicated to the topic and a strong identity of keywords. A co-citation analysis shows that the international entrepreneurship field is structured on a stable body of references, organised into five key clusters, distinct from its mother disciplines: international business and entrepreneurship. Our work helps to identify the paradigmatic approaches that structure international entrepreneurship.     

Crime,community social capital and entrepreneurship: Evidence from Australian communities

Crime is an anti-social blight on communities that increases the cost of doing business, including for entrepreneurs. Drawing on Australian longitudinal data, this study examines the links between crime rates and the propensity for entrepreneurship within communities. We do so by matching propensity for entrepreneurship with types of crime found at the community level where crime occurs. We find that higher total crime rates, crimes against the person and property crime, significantly lower the propensity for entrepreneurship in communities. We also show that the core facets of community social capital – trust, membership in voluntary organizations and support and cooperation – mediate this relationship.Executive summaryWe comprehensively examine whether higher community crime rates – crime on people and crime on property – cause lower rates of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship research extensively examines how gaining social capital, defined as the social resources one gains within one's community, promotes entrepreneurship. This study considers whether a pervasive community dynamic in crime impedes entrepreneurship. Specifically, we show that the two main kinds of crime – people and property – inhibit entrepreneurship.We show the facets of community social capital that mediate the relationship between crime and entrepreneurship. We inform the role of community-based social capital in promoting entrepreneurship (Kwon et al., 2013) by considering how higher crime lowers social capital and in turn entrepreneurship. We show that core facets of relational social capital – trust, voluntary membership in community bodies, support, and cooperation – mediate the relationship between crime and entrepreneurship. Likewise, communities with more robust reserves of social capital are better able to withstand crime and promote entrepreneurship.Examining the link between crime and entrepreneurship allows us to contribute to the literature on entrepreneurship and social capital. We discuss the various ways in which crime diminishes social capital to shape entrepreneurship. In our framework that is predicated on theory on community social capital, crime creates distrust because it causes citizens to be wearier and more suspicious of each other, impeding sharing of ideas and knowledge for ventures. Crime impedes the efficacy and membership of community-based organizations that allow entrepreneurs to network. Crime reduces the support available for founders to start and sustain businesses in focal communities, as individuals seek opportunities and resources outside their communities. Crime diminishes the extent to which people take pride in and identify with their communities, as evidenced by voluntary membership in community organizations. Crime reduces collaboration because it leads to self-protective behaviors, including flight from high-crime communities, that hinder norms of reciprocity. Crime reduces cooperation as criminals are more likely to resort to coercion, as enforced by monitoring and violence, to solve business problems.Findings rely on a comprehensive database of crime rates across Australian postcodes. Crime is typically a localized phenomenon – it affects business outcomes in local communities. We obtain community-level crime rates from each Australian state and territory police force or relevant government agencies and match these data with entrepreneurship rates by postcode. Our primary identification strategy follows Dustmann and Fasani (2016), who estimate the effect of local area crime on mental health in the United Kingdom (UK). This identification strategy removes the effects of residential sorting and correlates crime with time-varying unobserved entrepreneurship determinants if there is no endogenous migration from local crime. The main findings are robust to instrumenting for local area crime to which movers are exposed and for historical abortion rates in the state or territory where the individual lives, as well as a number of other approaches to obtaining causal inference.The article holds considerable practical relevance for policymakers seeking to promote community entrepreneurship. Our study is highly relevant to community leaders and policymakers working to boost local entrepreneurship. Findings strongly suggest that efforts to reduce crime are a primary mechanism to protect social capital within communities and, therefore, entrepreneurship. Policy initiatives dedicated to creating and expanding social ventures would a) boost entrepreneurship and social capital and b) mitigate the detrimental effects of crime on entrepreneurship (Wry and York, 2017).     

The development of an infrastructure for entrepreneurship

This paper takes a macroperspective of entrepreneurship, and focuses on the issues and events involved in constructing an industrial infrastructure that facilitates and constrains entrepreneurship. This infrastructure includes: (1) institutional arrangements to legitimate, regulate, and standardize a new technology, (2) public resource endowments of basic scientific knowledge, financing mechanisms, and a pool of competent labor, as well as (3) proprietary R&D, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution functions by private entrepreneurial firms to commercialize the innovation for profit. Although extensive research substantiates the importance of these infrastructure components, they have been treated as externalities to entrepreneurship. By incorporating these components within a single framework, one can systematically examine how various actors and functions interact to facilitate and constrain entrepreneurship.The paper makes three contributions to understanding entrepreneurship. First, I believe that the study of entrepreneurship is deficient if it focuses exclusively on the characteristics and behaviors of individual entrepreneurs, on the one hand, and if it treats the social, economic, and political factors influencing entrepreneurship as external demographic statistics, on the other hand. Popular folklore notwithstanding, the process of entrepreneurship is a collective achievement requiring key roles from numerous entrepreneurs in both the public and private sectors.Second, the paper examines how and why this infrastructure for entrepreneurship emerges. I argue that while this infrastructure facilitates and constrains individual entrepreneurs, it is the latter who construct and change the industrial infrastructure. This infrastructure does not emerge and change all at once by the actions of one or even a few key entrepreneurs. Instead, it emerges through the accretion of numerous institutional, resource, and proprietary events that co-produce each other over an extended period. Moreover, the very institutional arrangements and resource endowments created to facilitate industry emergence can become inertial forces that hinder subsequent technological development and adaptation by proprietary firms. This generative process has a dynamic history that is itself important to study systematically if one is to understand how novel forms of technologies, organizations, and institutions emerge.Finally, the paper emphasizes that the process of entrepreneurship is not limited to the for-profit sector; numerous entrepreneurial actors in the public and not-for-profit sectors play crucial roles. It motivates one to examine the different roles played by these actors, and how their joint contributions interact to develop and commercialize a new technology. This in turn makes it possible to understand how the risk, time, and cost to an individual entrepreneur are significantly influenced by developments in the overall Infrastructure for entrepreneurship. It also explains why the entrepreneurs who run in packs will be more successful than those that go it alone to develop their innovations.     

University spin-offs and the “performance premium”

The creation of spin-off companies is often promoted as a desirable mechanism for transferring knowledge and technologies from research organizations to the private sector for commercialization. In the promotion process, policymakers typically treat these “university” spin-offs like industry start-ups. However, when university spin-offs involve an employment transition by a researcher from the not-for-profit sector, the creation of a university spin-off is likely to impose a higher social cost than the creation of an industry start-up. To offset this higher social cost, university spin-offs must produce a larger stream of social benefits than industry start-ups, a performance premium. This paper outlines the arguments explaining why the social costs of entrepreneurship are likely to be higher for academic entrepreneurs, and empirically investigates the existence of a performance premium using a sample of German start-up companies. We find that university spin-offs exhibit a performance premium of 3.4 % points higher employment growth over industry start-ups. The analysis also shows that the performance premium varies across types of academic entrepreneurs and founders’ academic disciplines.     

A Positive Theory of Social Entrepreneurship

I propose a theory aimed at advancing scholarly research in social entrepreneurship. By highlighting the key trade-off between value creation and value capture and explaining when situations of simultaneous market and government failure may arise, I suggest that social entrepreneurship is the pursuit of sustainable solutions to neglected problems with positive externalities. I further discuss the situations in which problems with externalities are likely to be neglected and derive the central goal and logic of action of social entrepreneurs, in contrast to commercial entrepreneurs. Overall, this article provides a conceptual framework that allows understanding the growing phenomena of social entrepreneurship and its role in the functioning of modern society.     

Is your organization conducive to the continuous creation of social value? Toward a social corporate entrepreneurship scale

Over the last decade, explicit emphasis on the creation of social value has grown in profit-seeking firms as well as nonprofits and has even led to the emergence of a new legal organizational classification known as for-benefit corporations. Like financial value, social value is dynamic and therefore subject to perpetual changes in the firm’s external environment, changes that yield opportunities and threats for the firm. Although social entrepreneurship researchers have begun to study the identification and exploitation of opportunities to create social value, this research has taken place primarily within the context of startup organizations. In contrast, corporate entrepreneurship research has emphasized value creation within existing firms, but focused primarily on the identification and exploitation of opportunities to create financial value. Combining the two, we examine the creation of social value within the firm by proposing the social corporate entrepreneurship scale (SCES), a new instrument that measures organizational antecedents for social corporate entrepreneurship and offers managers an opportunity to analyze whether the perceived environment is supportive of corporate entrepreneurial behaviors intended to create social as well as financial value. The article concludes with a discussion of the instrument’s potential contribution to managerial practice.     

Outing the Silent Partner: Espousing the Economic Values that Operate in Not-For-Profit Organizations

The tension between organizational values and the operation of aged care as a business is often characterized as the “mission versus margin” dilemma. It is common across the industry in both not-for-profit and for-profit organizations. However, in for-profit aged care facilities, there is no question about the intention to make a profit or the purpose of the profits. This is not so clear in not-for-profit aged care organizations. This article explores the tension through the examination of a detailed case study of one of the larger not-for-profit social service organizations—All Saints Christian Care. It analyses the culture and managerial decisions though the lens of the political philosophy value pluralism. Finally, based on the value-plural theory, recommendations are made that would create greater operational transparency in not-for-profit aged care service.     

Gender Characterizations in Entrepreneurship: A Multi‐Level Investigation of Sex‐Role Stereotypes about High‐Growth,Commercial, and Social Entrepreneurs

The purpose of this study is to cast new light on possible gender biases in implicit theories people hold about various forms of entrepreneurial activity. Using social role theory, we delve into sex‐role stereotypes associated with high‐ and low‐growth entrepreneurship and commercial and social entrepreneurship. Predictions were tested with an experimental design using both a between‐subject design to capture group‐level stereotypes and a within‐subject design to capture individual‐level stereotypes. Findings reveal that commercial and high‐growth entrepreneurs are perceived as more similar to men than to women and higher on agency than communality. Conversely, low‐growth entrepreneurs are perceived as more similar to women than men, and higher on communality than agency. Social entrepreneurs are uniquely perceived as similar to both men and women, though they are also considered higher on agency than communality. Interestingly, female, but not male respondents, perceive some overlap between the feminine gender role and high‐growth and commercial entrepreneurship. Notably, those higher on modern sexism perceive less overlap between entrepreneurship and femininity. Taken together, our results suggest that commercial high‐growth entrepreneurship is most strongly male‐typed, which is likely to be problematic for women (and non‐traditional men) wanting to start growth‐oriented ventures. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Entrepreneurial Intention and UAE Youth: Unique Influencers of Entrepreneurial Intentions in an Emerging Country Context

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a young, oil-rich country, where national youth display a clear preference for public sector employment. Growing youth unemployment reinforces the importance of non-government employment, including entrepreneurship. This study investigates UAE national youth intentions toward entrepreneurship through the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Entrepreneurial Intention Questionnaire (EIQ). Analysis (N?=?544) identifies the direct influence of attitude and perceived behavioral control and indirect influence of subjective norms on entrepreneurship intention. Results also examine several demographic variables and highlight the potential importance of family and social groups in promoting entrepreneurial intentions in this emerging country context.     

Market imperfections,opportunity and sustainable entrepreneurship

This research develops the argument that four types of market imperfections (i.e., inefficient firms, externalities, flawed pricing mechanisms and information asymmetries) at once contribute to environmental degradation and that they also provide significant opportunities for the creation of radical technologies and innovative business models. We show that these opportunities establish the foundations for an emerging model of sustainable entrepreneurship, one which enables founders to obtain entrepreneurial rents while simultaneously improving local and global social and environmental conditions. To advance this new field, we offer suggestions for a research agenda focusing on two areas: the relationship between market imperfections and entrepreneurial opportunities, and the emerging field of sustainable entrepreneurship.     

The social value of productive entrepreneurship

As a critical contribution to the literature on social entrepreneurship, this paper provides structure and clarity to this concept, situating it within the context of charity and philanthropy as sources of social value creation. Identifying social entrepreneurship as creating both social and economic value, we discuss productive, unproductive, and destructive entrepreneurship in terms of social value creation. To illustrate these issues comparative case studies are presented on Microsoft Corporation and Grameen Bank. Even if their successes have been derived from different motivations, these highly innovative ventures have created significant economic and social value.