Social ventures : the development of the theory of sustainable contributive advantage and initial empirical tests

摘要

This thesis attempts to fill gaps in both a theoretical basis and an operational and strategicunderstanding in the areas of social ventures, social entrepreneurship and nonprofitbusiness models. This study also attempts to bridge the gap in strategic and economictheory between social and commercial ventures. More specifically, this thesis exploressustainable competitive advantage from a resource-based theory perspective and exploreshow it may be applied to the nonmarket situation of nonprofit organizations and socialventures.It is proposed that a social value-orientation of sustainable competitive advantage, calledsustainable contributive advantage, provides a more realistic depiction of what isnecessary in order for a social venture to perform better than its competitors over time. Inaddition to providing this realistic depiction, this research provides a substantial theoreticalcontribution in the area of economics, social ventures, and strategy research, specificallyin regards to resource-based theory. The proposed model for sustainable contributiveadvantage uses resource-based theory and competitive advantage in order to be applicableto social ventures. This model proposes an explanation of a social venture’s ability todemonstrate consistently superior performance.In order to determine whether sustainable competitive advantage is in fact, appropriate toapply to both social and economic environments, quantitative analyses are conducted on alarge sample of nonprofit organizations in a single industry and then compared to similarquantitative analyses conducted on commercial ventures. In comparing the trends andstrategies between the two types of entities from a quantitative perspective, propositionsare developed regarding a social venture’s resource utilization strategies and their possibleimpact on performance.Evidence is found to support the necessity of adjusting existing models in resource-basedtheory in order to apply them to social ventures. Additionally supported is the proposedtheory of sustainable contributive advantage. The thesis concludes with recommendationsfor practitioners, researchers and policy makers as well as suggestions for future research paths.