Towards a ‘Long View’: Historical Perspectives on the Scaling and Replication of Social Ventures

Abstract

Social ventures are now widely regarded as playing an essential role in addressing persistent and pervasive societal challenges. This insight has prompted an active search for readily scaleable and replicable business models. However, relatively little consideration has been given to the longer term growth and performance of these hybrid organizational forms. This paper examines how historically informed research might enhance our understanding of growth processes. It considers the conceptualization of organizational growth in social ventures and the relevance of prevailing constructs. The explanatory potential of ‘long-view’ approaches is examined by applying three constructs (opportunity recognition, entrepreneurial adjustment and institutional structure) in a comparative historical analysis of two British social ventures.

Key Words:

• Social ventures
• growth process
• scaling
• replication
• historical methods

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the editor, reviewers and colleagues, including Heather Fernandez, Ian Vickers, Rob Baldock, Chris Cornforth, Rob Paton, Roger Spear and Richard Croucher, for the insightful comments and discussions that have helped us to develop our arguments. We are also particularly indebted to Laura Spence for her input to the initial phase of this study. The paper would not have been possible without the contribution of staff at the LEYF and HHW who gave their time and shared their views. This paper is part of the Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC) programme of work and the Social Enterprise Research Capacity Building Cluster. The authors remain responsible for any errors or omissions.

Notes

1. There are some earlier examples of historical research on the growth of non-profits (e.g. Galaskiewicz and Bielefeld 1998). The issue is also considered inter alia in two recent studies (e.g. Woodin, Crook and Carpentier 2010; Armsworth et al. 2012).

2. Examples of related policy initiatives include those initiated by the US Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, the UK's Office of Civil Society and the European Union Social Business Initiative.

3. The term, ‘social enterprise’ is also used in quotations and when referring to specific articles.

4. Organization-level studies in this tradition have addressed several distinct research agendas. These include: isolating discrete characteristics of high-growth rate firms, making ex-ante predictions of high-growth rate firms (i.e. ‘picking winners’), identifying generic internal and external ‘barriers to growth’, and creating integrative econometric models (e.g. Wiklund, Patzelt, and Shepherd 2009). Delmar (1997) provides a more detailed account of this literature.

5. By contrast, conceptual development on growth has largely been the result of constructive dialogues with other literatures, such as organizational learning and gender (e.g. Macpherson and Holt 2007; Brush et al. 2010).

6. The term ‘gross receipts’ may also be adopted in the case of non-profit organizations.

7. The distinction is highlighted by the authors of this study, who emphasize that their focus is on ‘how NGOs can scale up their impact without becoming large’ (Uvin, Jain, and Brown 2000, 1410 – emphasis added).

8. In practice, organizational scale and scope are both likely to be important factors in securing competitive advantage in public procurement (e.g. Aiken 2006).

9. Precursor studies from the entrepreneurship literature include Garud and Karnøe (2003) and Johannisson and Olaison (2007); the concept has been elaborated in DiDomenico, Haugh, and Tracey (2010).

10. The broader franchising models literature may also offer useful constructs for future social venture replication studies (e.g. Bodey, Weaven, and Grace 2011).

11. There is an extensive tradition of historical research on organizational growth in the fields of entrepreneurship and business history. A detailed review of this literature is beyond the scope of the present paper; for recent overviews, see Cassis and Minoglou (2005) and Jones and Wadhwani (2008).

12. Organizational case analysis is a well-established method that has gained traction in small business and entrepreneurship studies. It has also been adopted in recent research on social ventures, enabling researchers to gain an in-depth understanding of particular phenomena (Urbano, Toledano, and Soriano 2010). The term ‘narrative sequence methods’ (NSM) has also been used recently in the field of international entrepreneurship to describe a broadly similar approach, which introduces ‘time, timing and temporal processes’ in its search for mechanisms underlying observed events (Buttriss and Wilkinson 2006).

13. While historical studies are generally written up as narratives, quantitative analysis also plays an important role in seminal works such as Braudel's (1981–1984) trilogy Civilization and Capitalism (Stager Jacques 2006, 43). Researchers have also drawn on official data-sets to identify temporal patterns in organizational populations over extended periods. The findings of such studies can be used to identify new research questions and complement evidence obtained from more in-depth qualitative sources.

14. WCS Second Annual Report, 1 July 1905 to 30 June 1906, ref 1352/17 City of Westminster Archives Centre.

15. Thirty-sixth Report, 1 January 1943 to 31 December 1945, with statement of accounts, 1 April 1942 to 31 March 1945 1352/46 1942–1945.

16. Fortieth report, with statement of accounts 1352/50 5 July 1948 to 31 March 1949.

17. Hill Holt Wood (2004).

Additional information

Funding

The support of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Office for Civil Society (OCS) and the Barrow Cadbury UK Trust is gratefully acknowledged [grant number RES-595-28-0001], [grant number RES-595-24-0006].