Pathways to Scaling International Impact: Exploring Capabilities in B Corps

Abstract

With the rising global awareness of sustainable development issues, hybrid ventures have increasingly brought their solutions across borders to scale their impact internationally. Yet, prior research has largely concentrated on international scaling undertaken via sales growth for economic goals. We instead offer an elaborated conceptualisation of international impact scaling, which includes internal growth, partnership, and dissemination downstream and upstream in the value chain. Stemming from prior research that views capabilities as critical ‘firm-specific advantages’ for international expansion, we investigate which capabilities hybrid ventures leverage when scaling impact internationally and to what extent they differ across scaling strategies. We adopt a qualitative method to analyse seven B Corps, a type of hybrid venture whose impact is certified. The findings reveal three clusters of foundational capabilities that B Corps leverage irrespective of the specific scaling strategy adopted, alongside a range of targeted capabilities that are specifically important to each international scaling strategy. The study contributes to international scaling research and the literature on hybrid ventures.