Abstract
This study illustrates how partnerships in asymmetric power relationships, such as social enterprises and large established firms, can be made in the context of social partnership. We acknowledge that partnerships with large corporations can help social enterprises to overcome several structural barriers they may encounter in forming and sustaining their business models. However, these partnerships can be situated in asymmetric power relationships as resource dependence unfolds. Thus, paradoxically, a partnership with a large corporation can be another challenge to the social enterprise. In absorbing these constraints, we propose that a social enterprise should come up with a stylized social partnership model, utilizing their social capital when engaging in the formation of such a power-imbalanced partnership. We conducted an in-depth case study which presents how a small and young social enterprise can achieve a viable partnership with a large, established firm. Our findings show that social enterprises can form and develop long-term sustainable partnerships with large corporations using a stylized platform strategy with social capital and relational governance in the process of collective value creation.
Highlights
There are different kinds of entrepreneurs who might have different goals and motivations for their activities, such as job creators, high-growth entrepreneurs, solo-self-employed individuals, and even social entrepreneurs [1]
Our research questions include the following: why would large corporations be interested in forming a partnership with small social enterprises when there are many differences in their goals, perspectives, and methods? What could they obtain in the process of negotiating the formation of a social partnership? How could new and small social enterprises scale up their social mission when large corporations and nascent/small social enterprises lie within asymmetrical power relations? As a key mechanism for the creation of such viable coalitions, we proposed that the social enterprises’ social capital and relational governance play active roles with regards to how social partnerships among multiple organizations in asymmetrical power relations can be formed to benefit the participants in the partnership
We demonstrate that an asymmetric power relationship, a partnership between a social enterprise and a large, established firm, can be reconciled through collaborative value creation
Summary
There are different kinds of entrepreneurs who might have different goals and motivations for their activities, such as job creators, high-growth entrepreneurs, solo-self-employed individuals, and even social entrepreneurs [1]. Social enterprises have different goals and motivations from commercial organizations. While commercial organizations (i.e., established firms) set a definitive business model that connects ideas to economic performance [2,3], it is inevitably difficult for social enterprises to set a business model that establishes such important strategies. Many scholars of management strategy have argued that to gain competitive advantages, companies usually attempt to attain resources, internally and externally [7,8,9]. This suggests that social enterprises need to overcome their resource issues by mobilizing critical resources proactively either internally or externally
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