Facilitating Corporate Social Innovation in Partnerships : A multiple case study on the origin of corporate social innovation in partnerships

Abstract: Background: The increase in public awareness and rising social expectations have changed the role businesses have in modern society, as they are expected to deliver both organizational and social value. Despite this, most social engagements have previously been philanthropic, which is argued to only scratch the surface of societal issues. The concept of CSI was therefore coined, and it focuses on leveraging companies’ core capabilities to be innovative while forming collaborations and partnerships between units within the company and external organizations to mend social ills. This concept has been described to yield excellent outcomes; however, the initiation and implementation of CSI have been vaguely depicted in literature.  Purpose: Previous research of CSI has centralized around the outcomes, such as innovation capabilities and competitive advantage, and regularly compared them to more basic philanthropic initiatives. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to focus on the origin of CSI in organizations and how partnerships can facilitate its generation. The thesis further intends to collect and summarize the various definitions of CSI to establish the occurrence of CSI in various organizations.  Method: This research adopted a critical realism philosophical stance to perform a multiple case study. We did this with a qualitative research design, including eight semi-structured interviews with participants from different organizations currently engaged in partnerships. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis, which we practically performed using an abductive approach to code data and the subsequent thematization. The findings of this thesis are then, using theory matching and triangulation, presented to discover alternative explanations for the facilitating factors of CSI in partnerships.  Conclusion: We consolidated previous research to construct a definition of CSI. This consolidated concept was used to evaluate the initiatives in the participants’ partnerships. We used thematic analysis to define three distinct facilitating themes for generating CSI in partnerships: People, Partnership Conditions, and Institutional Entity Structure. Conclusively, the purpose was achieved as our findings and subsequent analysis indicates that the three realized themes substantially influence CSI generation. It was found that these facilitating factors are interdependent, as the underdevelopment of one area negatively influenced the ability to engage in CSI.