مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد اتحاد استراتژیک و عملکرد شرکت در استارتاپ ها با یک تکلیف اجتماعی – الزویر 2020

1- Introduction

2- A framework for strategic alliances and startup performance

3- Methodology

4- Analysis and results

5- Discussion

6- Implications for practitioners

7- Conclusions

References

Abstract

Innovation with a social purpose is strictly linked to entrepreneurship and economic development. However, those startups that pursue a social mission often operate in really novel markets and raise some scepticism in the eyes of investors. Startups can improve their business performance by leveraging on equity and non-equity based strategic alliances, so to pursue growth. However, sustainable growth requires to attract the right investments at the right stage of development of the startup. This study draws on international business theory and proposes a novel framework that explains the mechanisms regulating strategic alliances and firm performance in a startups context. We use a sample of 3913 UK high-tech startups engaging in social innovation to test our hypotheses and we derive an explanation for some of the mechanisms behind strategic alliances effect on startups performance, startups scalability and the balance needed between performance and the pursuit of a social mission.

Introduction

In the UK, 5.7 m small businesses contribute to £1.9 trillion of turnover and employ 16 m people (UK Government, 2019). A recent report from the British Council (2019) highlighted the increase of social enterprising activity in the UK, which contributes to the UK economy with £24bn per year across economic sectors. Social enterprises operate in any industry of the UK economy and the government gives them increasingly higher attention and ‘have introduced a number of initiatives to support the sector’s growth. This has resulted in financial support and legislation to make the business environment more favourable for social enterprises’ (2019, p. 49). As authors of this study, we believe the scope of the definition of social enterprises is currently too narrowly focusing only on not-forprofit organisations, neglecting the social mission embedded in many for-profit organisations. Social enterprises are generally defined as businesses ‘with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in the business or in the community, rather than being driven by the need to maximise profit for shareholders and owners’ (DTI, 2002), but it is often difficult to obtain a crisp definition of social enterprises based on social purpose. For instance, a lot of for-profit organisations engage in social innovation (Altuna, Contri, Dell’Era, Frattini, & Maccarrone, 2015) thus, these also have a social purpose without necessarily being classified as social enterprises. These enterprises have been defined as ‘for-profit social ventures’, as they have been incorporated as for-profit bodies, but they have been designed to serve a social purpose (Dees & Anderson, 2003). Likewise, a lot of social enterprises do not engage in social innovation, despite their focus on sustainability (Yunus, Moingeon, & Lehmann-Ortega, 2010). Furthermore, social innovation is cross-sectoral (Murphy, Perrot, & Rivera-Santos, 2012) as it involves public and private stakeholders (the latter, in both for-profit and not-for-profit companies), and, thereby, attracting the interest of governmental and supra-governmental bodies. For instance, the European Union ‘acts as an agenda-setter in the measurement of social innovation, working with and liaising with the private sector, venture capitalists, and foundations to facilitate a consensus’ (European Commission, 2012, p. 15). Enterprises, to deliver on social mission goals without lessening their business performance, have to leverage the collaborations that often occur in spontaneous entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystems (Letaifa & Rabeau, 2013). This is particularly true for startups, which lack resources and social capital (Lonial & Carter, 2015). Given the stress caused by limited resources, collaborations amongst startups have to be strategic in nature and different types of alliances can take shape between startups and their partners according to their different strategic alignments (Herrera, 2015).