Inhibiting Factors for Scaling Affected by the Pre-condition of Willingness

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Influences of Social Forces

Cognitive frames are described as the mental aspect of the social environment, such as commonly shared meanings in a society, which influence how actions are perceived and interpreted (Scheuerle & Schmitz, 2016). Beckert (2010) refer to cognitive frames as being the social force controlling the dynamics and order of the market. Influence from cognitive frames can also be described as the tendency of repeating inscribed habits and norms (Beckert, 2010) In the study conducted by Scheuerle and Schmitz (2016) a strong connection was found between cognitive frames and the pre-condition willingness to scale. This finding goes in line with a previous study focused on the earlier stages of social entrepreneurship.

Differences in the Swedish and German Market

For this thesis we will investigate inhibiting factors for scaling from a Swedish market perspective. In the social entrepreneurship literature, much has been written from the perspective of liberal welfare regimes, such as the USA or the UK (Mair & Marti, 2006). A common characteristic of these markets is that social services are based on larger shares of private funding than the markets of more conservative social welfare states (Scheuerle & Schmitz, 2016). Increasing the knowledge about national dissimilarities is vital when trying to support entrepreneurs, investors and policymakers so they can develop and revive the national economy (Busenitz, et al., 2000). Nevertheless, knowledge and scholarly literature regarding different levels of entrepreneurship, how they differ between countries and why some entrepreneurial businesses are more successful than others, is sparse (Aronson, 1992; Rondinelli & Kasarda, 1992).

Case Companies

Based on the mentioned criteria and the combination of positive responses and access, this resulted in a sample of seven social enterprises. The following table, Table 2, presents the selection of cases and in order for us to ensure anonymity (Bell & Bryman, 2007) all the companies have received letters instead of using their official company name. The table is followed by a short presentation of each company to enlighten general information regarding each and every company. The geographic criteria is based on region instead of municipality due to assurance of anonymity and confidentiality in research findings. The criteria “company type” is the same in all the seven cases which is the reason of why it is not included in the table.

Secondary Data

To establish trustworthiness of results for this study, the primary data has been complemented by data obtained from secondary sources, so-called secondary data (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe & Jackson, 2015). Secondary data may be news and articles that have been written about the specific case and archival data refers to organizational records such as budgets and reports (Yin, 2014). The case companies’ own websites have served as important sources of secondary data collection and used for sense making of primary data. The secondary data has been useful complements to the primary data as it has allowed us to spend more focused time on the specific phenomenon scaling during the limited timeframes in interviews (Eisenhardt, 1989), as well as increasing the triangulation of the topic (Guba, 1981) and ability to map the given context of each case.

Presenting Results

According to Yin (2014) there are two main ways of presenting results from multiple case studies. The first one follows a question-and-answer format, clearly stating answers from individual cases so that readers can draw their own cross case analysis early on. The second reporting format follows a narrative structure where the main focus lies in cross-case material, but is complemented by appendices, key quotations or other evidence to support findings from individual cases (Yin, 2014). According to Eisenhardt and Graebner (2007) presentation of results from multi-case studies tend to result in difficult trade-offs between provision of rich empirical evidence or well-grounded emergent theory. Thereof, they suggest researchers to use the main part of the report for development of theory, and then use evidence from at least some of the cases to support the different parts of the theory (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007).

Credibility

Credibility is a term used to establish confidence in truth value of research findings (Guba, 1981). One way of assessing credibility of a study is to conduct so called “member checks”, meaning that you test the truth of the data with members of the relevant sample source (Guba, 1981). To ensure credibility of our research findings we conducted member checks during and after the interviews. We mainly did this by ending each thematic section of the interview by stating our interpretation to see if it corresponded to the intended message of the interviewees. Sometimes, this lead to a reformulation of answers in our field notes. Moreover, after we had transcribed and summarized the data we did another member, by e-mailing the transcriptions for confirmation, to see if the interpretations corresponded to the intention of the interviewees.

Table of Contents :

• 1. Introduction
  • 1.1 Background
  • 1.2 Problem Discussion
  • 1.3 Purpose and Research Questions
  • 1.4 Delimitations
  • 1.5 Definition of Key Terms
• 2. Frame of Reference
  • 2.1 Scaling Social Impact
    • 2.1.1 What is “Scaling”?
    • 2.1.2 The Role of Scaling
    • 2.1.3 Inhibiting Factors for Scaling Social Impact
    • 2.1.4 Theoretical Models on Scaling Social Impact
  • 2.2 Proposed Theoretical Model
  • 2.3 Scaling up (Pre) Condition
    • 2.3.1 Willingness
    • 2.3.2 Ability
    • 2.3.3 Admission
  • 2.4 Co-shaping Social Forces
    • 2.4.1 Influences of Social Forces
  • 2.5 Differences in the Swedish and German Market
• 3. Research Methodology
  • 3.1 Research Philosophy
    • 3.1.1 Research Approach
  • 3.2 Research Design
    • 3.2.1 Research Strategy
    • 3.2.2 Research Method
    • 3.2.3 Unit of Analysis
    • 3.2.4 Case Selection
  • 3.3 Data Collection Techniques
    • 3.3.1 Primary Data
    • 3.3.2 Secondary Data
  • 3.4 Data Analysis
  • 3.5 Presenting Results
  • 3.6 Assessing the Research Quality
• 4. Empirical Findings
  • 4.1 Introduction to the Cases
  • 4.1.1 Ambitions for Scaling
  • 4.2 Willingness
    • 4.2.1. Leaders’ Willingness to Scale
    • 4.2.2 Organizational Willingness to Scale
    • 4.2.3 Stakeholders’ Willingness to Support Scaling Processes
  • 4.3 Ability
    • 4.3.1 Leader’s Ability to Scale
    • 4.3.2 Organizational Ability to Scale
    • 4.3.3 Stakeholder’s Ability to Support Scaling Processes
  • 4.4 Admission
    • 4.4.1 Institutional Factors and the Leader
    • 4.4.2 Institutional Factors and the Organization
    • 4.4.3 Institutional Factors on Stakeholders
  • 4.5 Summary of Empirical Findings
• 5. Analysis
  • 5.1 Inhibiting Factors for Scaling Affected by the Pre-condition of Willingness
    • 5.1.1 Leadership
    • 5.1.2 Organization
    • 5.1.3. Ecosystem
    • 5.1.4 Summary
  • 5.2 Inhibiting Factors for Scaling Affected by the Pre-condition of Ability
    • 5.2.1 Leadership
    • 5.2.2 Organization
    • 5.2.3 Ecosystem
    • 5.2.4 Summary
  • 5.3 Inhibiting Factors for Scaling Affected by the Pre-condition of Admission
    • 5.3.1 Organization
    • 5.3.2 Ecosystem
    • 5.3.3 Summary
  • 5.4 Concluding Remarks and Further Development of the Model
• 6. Conclusion and Discussion
  • 6.1 Purpose and Research Questions
  • 6.2 Implications
    • 6.2.1 Theoretical Implications
    • 6.2.2 Practical Implications
    • 6.2.3 Societal Implications
  • 6.3 Limitations
  • 6.4 Suggestions for Future Research
• References

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