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Year: 2021
Published in: Journal of Business Research
Cited as: Felix Ostertag, Rüdiger Hahn, Inan Ince,
Blended value co-creation: A qualitative investigation of relationship designs of social enterprises, Journal of Business Research, Volume 129, 2021, Pages 428-445, ISSN 0148-2963, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.02.006.

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Abstract

Social enterprises access large networks of stakeholders to gain strategic benefits. We identify determinants for creating blended value through partnerships of social enterprises and develop an understanding of blended value co-creation. Findings from 18 cases suggest that most social enterprises generate value by integrating partners in the businesses’ structures or by venturing into deeper personal connections through extensive knowledge-sharing that can culminate in partner-specific assets. Social enterprises take two distinct approaches in designing their relationships: an anthropocentric extroverted or a structurally integrated approach. By adding a social perspective on value creation, this study enriches the concept of the relational view.

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Future Research

Our findings indicate that the relational view proposed by Dyer and Singh (1998) can be extended beyond the original theory’s purely economic perspective. Complementing the insights provided by Emerson (2003) and Weber, Bauke, and Raibulet’s (2016) processual perspective of the relational view, our framework could serve as a starting point for further investigation and rethinking dependencies among relational determinants of value creation.
Future research could, for instance, attempt to validate our framework in a longitudinal, quantitative setting and analyze further boundary conditions that might inhibit social enterprises from advancing to higher-order stages of blended value co-creation.
2) To co-create blended value, social enterprises often expedite inter-organizational learning, while using a diverse range of stakeholders. However, the findings also indicate that relational assets are developed less frequently. Hence, future studies could venture deeper to scrutinize whether the discrepancy between the second and third stages is due to a temporal component in the model, in which investments in the design of anthropocentric extroverted or physical assets follow after spending some time developing the relationship, or whether it is a deliberate decision.
3) To co-create blended value, social enterprises often expedite inter-organizational learning,
4) Given that this study was conducted with German social enterprises only, we call for future research in different national contexts and institutional environments. While using a diverse range of stakeholders. However, the findings also indicate that relational assets are developed less frequently. Hence, future studies could venture deeper to scrutinize whether the discrepancy between the second and third stages is due to a temporal component in the model, in which investments in the design of anthropocentric extroverted or physical assets follow after spending some time developing the relationship, or whether it is a deliberate decision.