Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract/Objectives

Research on social enterprises is becoming popular in both practice and academia; it is referred to as a hybrid research context that integrates social and business missions, and develop different strategic alliances, product development, and knowledge management in a business context. In terms of the lack of knowledge research in the hybrid context, this study explores how social enterprises learn from cross-sectoral social partnership, using a knowledge-based view. By investigating 14 social enterprises in Taiwan, we adopt qualitative research with a grounded theory approach to identity the knowledge types (including business and social) transferred through such partnership. A theoretical framework is proposed to show how the different types of knowledge are transferred through such partnership. Furthermore, we reveal the specific features of social enterprises that facilitate/restrict both intrafirm and interfirm knowledge transfer. Our contributions lie in the connection of knowledge studies to the hybrid context, the disclosure of the differences in knowledge transfer in the business/social sectors and the generation of in-depth insights into how knowledge can be managed under the dual mission in hybrid organizations.

Results/Contributions

This research has revealed how critical cross-sectoral social partnership is for social enterprises from a knowledge-based view, demonstrating what the knowledge is that social enterprises lean from their partners. In this study, we have revealed different types of knowledge being transferred through collaboration with the business and social sectors. Besides this, we have also identified the process by which knowledge is transformed. By exploring the knowledge transfer in hybrid interfirm collaborations, we have constructed new findings of practices that differ from those in common interfirm business collaborations. We claim that social enterprises should play different roles in communicating with different sectors, by transferring knowledge through a common language. Furthermore, this study has explored several knowledge barriers within social enterprises and their partnerships: moral purity, organizational identity, and hybrid tacit knowledge embedded in entrepreneurs.

Keywords

Knowledge transferSocial enterpriseInterfirm collaborationCross-sectoral social partnershipKnowledge learning