Publication date: Available online 26 October 2016
Source:Technological Forecasting and Social Change

Author(s): Shyama V. Ramani, Shuan SadreGhazi, Suraksha Gupta

One of the roles of social entrepreneurship within a national system of innovation (NSI) is to generate and ensure effective adoption of innovations that address underserved needs. However, many such innovations do not achieve the expected social impact. Why? Our paper explores answers to this question by considering access to sanitation as a basic need and ‘toilets’ as an innovation for those who had no prior access to one. We trace the evolution of the Indian sanitation sector and then delve into the process of sanitation coverage in an Indian village. We show that demand for social entrepreneurship is being increasingly satisfied by third party sponsored social enterprises. However, there is systemic uncertainty about the efforts required to catalyze demand and strategic uncertainty about the social enterprise's capabilities and intentions. Long term impact is jointly determined by the true intention of the social enterprise, its capabilities and the nature of contextual challenges. Therefore, forecasting of social change should integrate the incentives within NSI for social entrepreneurship to make high-quality sustained social impact rather than short-lived ones. This will not only depend on the willingness to adopt, but also the monitoring systems, impact analysis and sustainability audits that social entrepreneurship is subject to.

Publication date: November 2016
Source:Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Volume 112

Author(s): Chunguang Zhao, Hang Song, Wanyi Chen

After 30years of rapid development, China has made great strides in economic growth but at the expense of high environmental and social costs. Listed companies should fulfill their social responsibilities not only to meet the expectations of stakeholders but also to improve management effectiveness, cultivate competitive advantage, create a good image, and achieve sustainable development. Because the influence of corporate social responsibility is expanding gradually in China, the relationship among listed companies’ fulfillment of social responsibilities, information disclosure, and operational risk needs to be explored further. This study uses data on Chinese A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2009 and makes four main findings. First, listed companies improving their social responsibilities fulfillment face significantly lower operational risk. Second, listed companies publishing independent social responsibility reports face significantly increased operational risk. Third, high risk companies improving social responsibility fulfillment can significantly reduce their operational risk, while publishing independent social responsibility reports leads to significantly increased operational risk. Finally, low risk companies improving their social responsibilities fulfillment and publishing independent social responsibility reports experience changes in operational risk; however, the direction of the change varies by company. Companies with different operational risk have different effect because the company's majority shareholder is individual who lack of distinguishing news ability and CSR format is unified that is not enough to emphasize important disclosure issues.

Publication date: Available online 27 September 2016
Source:Journal of World Business

Author(s): Davide Fiaschi, Elisa Giuliani, Federica Nieri

As emerging (and developing) country firms internationalize, they often need to build legitimacy to overcome home-country liabilities. We argue that international legitimacy is at risk if these firms do harm in the conduct of their business, and we investigate the extent to which host countries’ speech and press freedoms influence corporate social irresponsibility (CSIR) for a sample of Multilatinas, observed during the period 2003–2012. We do find evidence of lower CSIR among Multilatinas which have adopted explicit CSR policies and have higher levels of investment in countries characterized by strong speech and press freedoms.

Despite mounting research on hybrid businesses that deliver value beyond financial goals, little is known about their nature. We assess what characterizes hybrid businesses and drives their founders by means of an abductive analysis of 18 ventures. Findings are discussed for the outcome of business models, organization of business model, and underlying aims of hybrid entrepreneurs building an empirical framework of constituents and characteristics. Results show participatory patterns of organization and emphasis on knowledge sharing about sustainability. The general profit and growth orientation is often a means to the end of achieving sustainability goals. Entrepreneurs are driven by nonmaterial motives.