Align or perish: social enterprise network orchestration in Sub-Saharan Africa

Christian Busch and Harry Barkema

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Previous research has shown that networks are vital for scaling the impact of social enterprises. However, at present, insight into how and why social enterprises successfully orchestrate networks over time as they scale, particularly in the Sub-Saharan African emerging economy context, is scant. Theoretically sensitized by social network theory, our inductive study of six Kenyan social enterprises analyzed their phase-contingent network orchestration. Our findings show how and why entrepreneurial contextual bridging and circumventing social liability are important for initial scaling, whereas aligned capacity building as well as aligning incentives with political actors become necessary to develop and navigate social business ecosystems. In sum, we contribute a deeper understanding of how and why agentic network actions help social entrepreneurs achieve success as they scale in an emerging economy context.

Keywords: Business ecosystem; Comparative case study; Emerging economy; Kenya; Low-income context; Scaling; Social embeddedness; Social entrepreneurship; Social impact; Social networks; AAM requested (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 L81 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2022-03-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-net and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published in Journal of Business Venturing, 1, March, 2022, 37(2). ISSN: 0883-9026

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:115350

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