Non-Profit Organizations as Facilitators of the Sustainable Social Innovation of Firms: An Italian Case Study

Lucia Vigoroso (), Roberto Sorrenti, Eugenio Cavallo and Federica Caffaro
Additional contact information
Lucia Vigoroso: Department of Education, University of Roma Tre, 00185 Rome, Italy
Roberto Sorrenti: Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Canon Law, University of Navarra, 31009 Pamplona, Spain
Eugenio Cavallo: Institute of Sciences and Technologies for Sustainable Energy and Mobility (STEMS) of the National Research Council (CNR) of Italy, 10135 Torino, Italy
Federica Caffaro: Department of Education, University of Roma Tre, 00185 Rome, Italy

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 10, 1-20

Abstract: Non-profit organizations (NPOs) are becoming top players in the business arena and can significantly contribute to socially sustainable development by leading several open innovation (OI) processes. The present study investigated the functioning of an NPO (ELIS, based in Rome, Italy), that acts as an open innovation intermediary in a large consortium of enterprises. By adopting a mixed-method approach, key aspects related to the NPO’s organizational culture, the OI management process within the consortium, as well as leadership skills and values were investigated among 77 employees and 8 managers of the NPO. Results showed that the managers’ approach to OI, teamwork, and market challenges significantly affected the NPO’s ability to produce OI among the consortium members. Moreover, empowering leadership, and a culture of trust and mistake acceptance were highly valued by the NPO in view of an effective OI performance. The study contributes to the current literature by highlighting the conditional factors of the NPO’s capability to create open innovation with enterprises, and push them toward societal change. Implications for OI development have been discussed.

Keywords: open innovation; non-profit organization; transformational leadership; employees’ perspective; managers’ perspective; organizational culture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/10/8058/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/10/8058/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:10:p:8058-:d:1147637

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().