Corporate Social Innovation (CSI) is a relatively recent term that scholars suggest was initially coined by Rosabeth Moss Kanter (1999) in her HBR article “From spare change to real change”. In this article, Moss Kanter suggests that CSI is a development of corporate social responsibility (CSR). She argues that firms need to adjust their strategies so the solving of societal challenges becomes part of their core (as opposed to peripheral) operations. Moss Kanter therefore locates CSI in the bottom left-hand corner of the social innovation triangle introduced by Nicholls and Murdock (2012). That is: in the private sector, as opposed to in the civil society or public sector ‘corners’. Both publications suggest that social innovation is most effective when it crosses sectoral boundaries and involves collaboration.
Despite the popularity of Moss Kanter’s seminal article and the enormous increase in the use of the term “social innovation”, Herrera (2015: 1468) suggests that the literature on corporate social innovation is “sparse but growing”. Googins (2013) also suggests that the field of CSI is under-researched. In contrast to Herrera however, he provides readers with a definition of the term, emphasising the strategic use of corporate assets “to co-create breakthrough solutions to complex social, economic and environmental issues” (Googins, 2013: 93). Jupp (2002: 24) suggests that CSI involves “companies using their organisational, financial and human resources to produce effective, innovative responses to intractable social problems”. In her discussion, she includes the idea of partnership, but initially it appears that she does not emphasise this aspect of CSI to the same degree as Googins.
Although the term “corporate social innovation” has not been overly used by scholars, this does not mean that the phenomenon itself has not been studied. Traditionally, the study of social innovation has been linked to the activities of social entrepreneurs and it is therefore possible that scholars such as Austin and Reficco (2009) – who employ terms such as “corporate social entrepreneurship” – may be discussing similar activities. It is therefore important to survey not only definitions and emphases within the CSI literature, but also areas of commonality and contrast, with regards to corporate social entrepreneurship.
The purpose of this paper is to explore the ways in which the concept of corporate social innovation has been defined, identifying key emphases and suggesting fruitful avenues for future research. In order to fulfill this purpose, four research questions are addressed in the paper, namely: i) what definitions of CSI exist in the literature? ii) what emphases do different scholars (or ‘schools’ of scholars) associate with CSI? iii) what are the similarities and differences between the CSI literature and other publications on social innovation - including corporate social entrepreneurship? iv) which areas of CSI are under-researched and would benefit from further study?
To fulfill its purpose, a review of the CSI literature is conducted. An integrative method is adopted that seeks to provide readers with a synthesis of key publications in the field (Torraco, 2005). It is also narrative in character, as its intention is to begin to map the ‘territory’ of corporate social innovation and possible overlaps with the field of corporate social entrepreneurship. As Green, Johnson and Adams (2006: 103) note, this type of review makes a scholarly contribution by pulling “many pieces of information together into a readable format” and “presenting a broad perspective on a topic and […] the history or development of a problem or its management”. Although the design of the review is presently a ‘work in progress’, it is expected that the relative scarcity of publications will require a broad survey of the field rather than the use of only a smaller group of highly ranked journals. This will be achieved using Harzing’s Publish or Perish software which enables scholars to access statistics for ranking and citations (drawing on Google Scholar).
References
Austin, J. E., & Reficco, E. 2009. Corporate Social Entrepreneurship. HBS Working Paper series(101): 27.
Googins, B. 2013. Leading with Innovation: Transforming Corporate Social Responsibility. In T. Osburg, & R. Schmidpeter (Eds.), Social Innovation: 89-98. Heidelberg: Springer.
Green, B. N., Johnson, C. D., & Adams, A. 2006. Writing narrative literature reviews for peer-reviewed journals: secrets of the trade. Journal of Chiropractic Medicine, 5(3): 101-117.
Herrera, M. E. B. 2015. Creating competitive advantage by institutionalizing corporate social innovation. Journal of Business Research, 68(7): 1468-1474.
Jupp, R. 2002. Getting Down to Business: An Agenda for Corporate Social Innovation. London: Demos.
Moss Kanter, R. 1999. From spare change to real change: The social sector as beta site for business innovation. Harvard Business Review, 77(3): 122-132, 210.
Nicholls, A., & Murdock, A. (Eds.). 2012. Social Innovation: Blurring Boundaries to Reconfigure Markets. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Torraco, R. J. 2005. Writing integrative literature reviews: Guidelines and examples. Human resource development review, 4(3): 356-367.
2. Social innovation and social entrepreneurship
