Scaling Social Innovation Through Cross Sector Social Partnerships

This book is designed to illuminate the features of cross-sector partnerships that make them powerful vehicles to drive social change. Partnerships across market sectors, involving for-profit, non-profit, and government entities, work because they leverage the advantages of each type of organization to arrive at novel solutions to social problems.

In the 21st century, businesses are increasingly faced with complex, "wicked" problems--challenges with social and environmental dimensions they cannot solve on their own. This is especially common in the frontier markets of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the former Soviet bloc. In many cases, the best solution is to create cross-sector partnerships with organizations from outside the business world--foundations, nonprofits, government agencies, and more. The resulting partnerships can generate business value as well positive social impact, thereby benefiting companies and communities alike. PARTNER WITH PURPOSE by Steve Schmida is a step-by-step guide to planning, launching, and successfully maintaining cross-sector partnerships, illustrated with vivid real-life stories from the author's work with companies around the world.

Organizations turn to multistakeholder partnerships (MSPs) to meet challenges that they cannot handle alone. By tapping the resources of diverse stakeholders, MSPs develop the capability to address complex issues and problems, such as health care delivery, poverty, human rights, watershed management, education, sustainability, and innovation. This book provides a comprehensive understanding of MSPs, why they are needed, the challenges partners face in working together and how to design them effectively. Through the process of collaboration partners combine their differing strengths, vantage points and expertise to craft innovative responses to pressing societal concerns. The book offers valuable advice for leaders about how to design and scale up effective partnerships and how to address potential obstacles that partners may face. Drawing on three comprehensive cases and countless shorter examples from around the world, the book offers both practical advice for organization embarking on an MSP as well as a theoretical understanding of how partnerships function. Using an institutional theory lens, it explains how partnerships can effect change in institutional fields by reducing turbulence and negotiating a common set of norms and routines to govern partners' future interactions within the field of concern.

This book provides an exhaustive, critical analysis of the challenges and opportunities associated with social enterprises and social innovation. More specifically, it addresses questions such as: What is a social innovation? Which are the best theories that explain how social innovations are generated and propagated in the global society? What is a social enterprise? Which are the theoretical perspectives that best describe the functioning of Social Enterprises , the threats and opportunities? How do social enterprises deal with the profit and non profit worlds and how these interactions affect their capability to be social innovators?The most recent literature has focused on strategies integrating conflicting logic, organizational practices or processes. In all these cases, the hybrid nature of the organization is implemented and sustained through original business models, new organizational arrangements and governance and novel strategies. We believe that the hybrid and institutional perspectives are just one of the many theoretical lenses that can be used to frame social innovation and social enterprises. Along this line, some have highlighted the inherent ethical nature of these phenomena, the critical role played by ethical values whose advancement go well beyond what expected by the corporate social responsibility, business ethics and institutional theorizing. This book follows these perspectives exploring the link between social innovation and social enterprises, presenting them as a new a new possible field of research that support new ways to understand and theorize individual, organizational and community behaviors.

This book approaches the field of social transformation from an ecotourism perspective. It unpacks the development of thought around social innovation as well as eco-tourism. After introducing various definitions and concept of social innovation and social entrepreneurship, the book then goes on to assess the current state of the environment and tourism leading into the discussion of how ecotourism social entrepreneurship can transform the industry for the better by analyzing five ecotourism case studies from Malaysia. Going beyond ecotourism social entrepreneurship in industry-specific contexts, the book serves as invitation to more participatory debate in academia in the field of social innovation and social entrepreneurship.

As we grapple with how to respond to some of the world’s most pressing problems, such as inequality, poverty and climate change, there is growing global interest in ‘social innovation’ as a potential solution. But what exactly is ‘social innovation’? This book describes three ways to theorise social innovation when seeking to manage and organize for both social and economic progress.

Cross-sector partnerships are widely hailed as a critical means for addressing a wide array of social challenges such as climate change, poverty, education, corruption, and health. Amid all the positive rhetoric of cross-sector partnerships though, critical voices point to the limited success of various initiatives in delivering genuine social change and in providing for real citizen participation. This collection critically examines the motivations for, processes within, and expected and actual outcomes of cross-sector partnerships. In opening up new theoretical, methodological, and practical perspectives on cross-sector social interactions, this book reimagines partnerships in order to explore the potential to contribute to the social good. A multi-disciplinary perspective on partnerships adds serious value to the debate in a range of fields including management, politics, public management, sociology, development studies, and international relations. Contributors to the volume reflect many of these diverse perspectives, enabling the book to provide an account of partnerships that is theoretically rich and methodologically varied. With critical contributions from leading academics such as Barbara Gray, Ans Kolk, John Selsky, and Sandra Waddock, this book is a comprehensive resource which will increase understanding of this vital issue.

Many social entrepreneurs struggle to take successful, innovative programs that address social problems on a local or limited basis and scale them up to expand their impact in a more widespread, deeper, and efficient way. In Scaling Social Impact , the editors address this issue with a comprehensive collection of original papers.