Driving Social Innovation in Bottom-of-the-Pyramid Markets through International Social Alliances: The Role of Legitimacy

Kishore Gopalakrishna Pillai (), Smitha R. Nair (), Nadia Zahoor () and Zaheer Khan ()
Additional contact information
Kishore Gopalakrishna Pillai: Rajagiri Business School
Smitha R. Nair: Independent Scholar
Nadia Zahoor: Queen Mary University of London
Zaheer Khan: University of Aberdeen Business School, University of Aberdeen, King’s College

Management International Review, 2024, vol. 64, issue 3, No 8, 567-595

Abstract: Abstract International social alliances—in which multinational enterprises (MNEs) and social enterprises (SEs) collaborate—are a vital source for the development and scaling up social innovations for value creation. Yet, these alliances face significant legitimacy challenges, which are more glaring in bottom-of-the-pyramid markets (BOPMs) within emerging and developing economies owing to weak and underdeveloped formal institutions. Drawing on the legitimacy, institutional, and social alliances literature, we develop a conceptual framework that explains the importance of developing social, institutional, and commercial legitimacy in international social alliances operating in BOPMs. We also explored the challenges faced by international social alliances in BOPMs and the factors that enable MNEs and SEs to build different types of legitimacy. We contribute to international business research by providing an understanding of various legitimacy building strategies enacted by international social alliances based in BOPMs for social value creation.

Keywords: International social alliances; Networks; Legitimacy; Institutional voids; Social innovation; Bottom of the pyramid markets; Emerging markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11575-024-00547-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:manint:v:64:y:2024:i:3:d:10.1007_s11575-024-00547-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/11575

DOI: 10.1007/s11575-024-00547-3

Access Statistics for this article

Management International Review is currently edited by Michael-Jörg Oesterle and Joachim Wolf

More articles in Management International Review from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().