Niki Glaveli
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Dr. Niki Glaveli is employed as a Lecturer at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) and as a Scientific Advisor on Social Entrepreneurship at the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Unit of AUTH. She holds two PhDs and has received the 2014 Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Award in Human Resource Management Category sponsored by Personnel Review.
The Social Co-operative Enterprise (SCE) is a relative new type institution of the third sector which despite its nonprofit character, is treated as a fully entrepreneurial entity. SCEs are called to integrate business principles into their functioning and adopt entrepreneurial behaviors in the provision of social goods/services (Schmidt et al., 2015). Given the characteristics of the contemporary Greek context, such as: budget deficits, uncontrollable public debt, negative growth rate, high levels of poverty and unemployment rates (resulting in mass youth emigration) and aging population, it could be supported that SCEs can be an important ally of the public sector in identifying emerging needs (due to their bottom-up nature), integrating people into society, facing the difficulties encountered by social policy and even take over in some areas. To be so, they are expected to turn to market mechanisms hoping to learn from private sector experience and improve their effectiveness and revenue generation to enable them pursue their social mission.
This paper seeks to contribute to a further understanding of the strategic aspect of SCEs’ entrepreneurial behavior and expand the current knowledge on the link between SCEs’ strategic orientation, vision and performance. Using data from Greek SCEs - called KOINSEPs, we examined the mediating roles of commercial and social effectiveness (as well as direct associations) with regard to strategic orientation effects on profitability. More precisely, based on an extensive literature review (i.e. Narver and Slater, 1990; Gatignon and Huereb, 1997; Schmidt et al., 2015), strategic orientation is conceptualized as a three dimensional construct consisting of the product, customer and market/competitor aspects. The findings designate that the customer orientation dimension, defined as an organization’s commitment to understand and satisfy customer/users preferences, plays the most vital role in enhancing SCEs effectiveness and subsequently profitability. Further, the development of a clear, shared among SCE members, vision has positive direct associations with social effectiveness and profitability levels. We conclude with a discussion of directions for future research and implications for theory and practice.
References:
Gatignon, H., and Xuereb, J.M., (1997). Strategic orientation of the firm and new product performance. Journal of Marketing Research, 34 (1), 77–79.
Narver, J.C., and Slater, S.F. (1990). The Effect of a Market Orientation on Business Profitability. Journal of Marketing, 54 (4), 20–35.
Schmidt, H. J., Baumgarth, C., Wiedmann, K.P., and Lückenbach, F (2015). Strategic orientations and the performance of Social Entrepreneurial Organisations (SEOs): A conceptual model. Social Business, 5 (2), 131-155.
