How to encourage social innovations: a resource-based approach

Abstract

During the last decade, social innovation has emerged as an outstanding topic for scholars, businesses, and public institutions. This growing interest is due to its potential positive effects on well-being and sustainable development. This study analyzes social innovation under the umbrella of the transformative service research framework. Adopting a resource-based perspective, the research attempts to determine whether the deployment in service organizations of two types of factors that support dynamic capabilities, i.e. internal market orientation, and information and communication technology competence, impacts the extent to which these organizations develop different kinds of product, process, marketing, and organizational social innovations. The study also assesses the impact of these innovation activities on the organization's transformational performance in terms of increased access to new targets. Empirical research is based on a two-step survey to a sample of Spanish nonprofits (particularly, a representative sample of foundations), since the nonprofit sector provides services that possess inherent transformational characteristics. Results confirm the expected positive effects of these two factors on social innovation and performance, and provide several guidelines for implementing social innovations in service industries.

Keywords:

• social innovation
• transformative services
• dynamic capabilities
• well-being

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the Spanish Association of Foundations (AEF) for endorsing the research project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

The authors acknowledge funding provided by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, as part of its R&D Plan (2009–2011), for the project entitled ‘Foundations as a key factor of Spanish firms’ corporate social responsibility strategy. Bi-directional analysis of the foundation-firm relationship following a marketing approach’ (MICINN-09-ECO2009-11377). The authors also wish to acknowledge the ITSSOIN project (Impact of the Third Sector as SOcial INnovation) for funding the presentation of a previous version of this article, that received the best paper award, at The Service Industries Journal track of the 2014 INBAM Conference. ITSSOIN (www.itssoin.eu) is a research project funded under the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme responding to a call to investigate ‘The impact of the third sector on socio-economic development in Europe’.