Unintended Consequences of Scaling Social Impact Through Ecosystem Growth Strategy in Social Enterprise and Social Entrepreneurship

Date
2020-06
Authors
Islam, SM
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Abstract

Scaling social impact is regarded as the main currency in social enterprise and social entrepreneurship. Many social enterprises scale their social impact through ecosystem growth strategy, under which they indirectly address targeted social problems by growing and/or sustaining a supportive social enterprise ecosystem through activities such as organising advocacy campaigns and supporting other social enterprises to grow. However, the existing literature is largely biased towards the success stories of ecosystem growth strategy. Countering this “success bias”, this article presents a framework describing how, under certain conditions, scaling social impact through ecosystem growth strategy can create unintended consequences. In doing so, this paper also challenges the prevailing reductionist view of ecosystem growth as a social impact scaling strategy and provides a more reliable and comprehensive account of this scaling strategy. This article hopes to stimulate future research on greater understanding and management of unintended consequences of ecosystem growth strategy in social enterprise, as well as delineating the boundary conditions of this strategy with regard to scaling social impact.

Description
Keywords
Social enterprise; Scaling social impact; Ecosystem growth strategy; Unintended consequence; Social entrepreneurship
Source
Journal of Business Venturing Insights, 13, e00159.
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Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in (see Citation). Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. The definitive version was published in (see Citation). The original publication is available at (see Publisher's Version).