Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract/Objectives

Although the development of human science and technology has brought rapid economic growth, it has also resulted in significant harm to the environment in which we live. Thus, the term "sustainable development" has started to draw the public's attention, first used to focus on the human development paradigm from the perspective of environmental protection and then gradually expanded to cover global issues. In 2000, leaders from 189 countries jointly announced the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at a United Nations Summit, including environmental sustainability as one of the development indicators. By 2015, the United Nations had released Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and specifically defined environmental protection as one of the three main aspects of them. As international and social debates on environmental sustainability issues intensify, more and more practical cases apply social innovation to address the key issues outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); however, few studies have focused on the operational mode of environment-focused social enterprises. The qualitative research method of case analysis is used in this research, which interviews social enterprises in Taiwan with environmental sustainability as the central concept. This research summarized the interaction process and outcomes of co-creation between environment-focused social enterprises and various stakeholders through semi- structured interviews.

Results/Contributions

Based on the analysis of the development of value co-creation and collaboration experiences between the SEs and their partners, we categorized the collaboration into that with three main groups of stakeholders: business, the general public, and the government. The findings reveal three patterns of interaction in the inter-organizational collaboration process between these environment-focused social enterprises and different partners, identified as resource integration, knowledge sharing, and resource exchange. The study contributes to the theory of value co-creation and inter-organizational collaboration, as well as the literature on social enterprises, with a specific focus on those with strong environmental missions. This research explores inter-organizational collaboration, as an important strategy of environment-oriented social enterprises, using case studies. According to the findings, inter-organizational collaboration practices are critical to advancing the innovation process and implementing this operational philosophy. Via separate collaboration actions, environment-oriented social enterprises have produced better results and gained resources. It has been discovered that actors also serve as developers, collaborating to create new goods and services. Inter-organizational collaboration fosters a virtuous circle of mutual benefit among stakeholders, enabling the achievement of social economic outcomes, social missions, and environmental sustainability. Furthermore, this research points out that in order to deliver the concept of environmental sustainability from the bottom-up, environment-focused social enterprises co-create social value with the general public through externalization will become a new concept.

Keywords

Environmental ProtectionSocial Enterprise