Business model innovation in social purpose organizations: Conceptualizing dual social-economic value creation

Abstract

Faced with competition and resource constraints, nonprofit social purpose organizations (SPOs) are increasingly pursuing business model innovation (BMI) to progress their dual – social and economic – value-creation focus. Reflecting this interest, the BMI literature in the SPO context has grown in significance, yet remains fragmented and in need of a conceptual framework to facilitate the development of a unified body of knowledge. Addressing this need, our conceptual framework captures antecedents and moderators driving and shaping BMI-based creation in nonprofit SPOs. We theorize that nonprofit SPOs pursuing BMI build learning capabilities that will provide new knowledge configurations to undertake BMI and achieve greater dual value creation. While this process is driven by their dual value creation focus and perceived environmental uncertainty, a set of internal and external factors moderate the suggested relationship between BMI and dual value creation. We discuss implications of our framework for theory, future research, and practice.