Social Impact Scaling Strategies in Social Enterprises: A Systematic Review and Research Agenda

Date
Authors
Islam, SM
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Abstract

Social enterprises have attracted increased attention from both researchers and practitioners around the world. In the social enterprise context, scaling social impact is considered the main currency or key performance metric. Two overarching social impact scaling strategies are organizational growth strategy and ecosystem growth strategy. However, to date, little cumulative knowledge exists on these two social impact scaling strategies. To address this issue, this article conducts a systematic review of 111 peer-reviewed articles. It identifies and discusses key insights into organizational growth strategy and ecosystem growth strategy as a means to scale social impact in social enterprises. Based on these findings, the current article also develops a framework to facilitate a comprehensive understanding of social impact scaling strategies in social enterprises. Finally, the review identifies gaps in the existing literature and discusses a comprehensive agenda for future research.

Description
Keywords
Ecosystem growth; Organizational growth; Scaling strategy; Social enterprise; Social entrepreneurship; Social impact
Source
Australian Journal of Management. https://doi.org/10.1177/03128962211014931
Rights statement
Authors of articles published in subscription journals may share and reuse their article as outlined on the Guidelines for SAGE Authors page and stated in their signed Contributor Agreements. Under SAGE's Green Open Access policy, the Accepted Version of the article may be posted in the author's institutional repository and reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses.