Cross-sector Collaboration for Social Value: Governance Framework for Community-Social Enterprise Partnerships

Abstract

There has been growing interest in the governance of social enterprise. In this paper, we focus on a specific social enterprise governance issue: the allocation of ownership and control over key resources between a social enterprise and a beneficiary community. Drawing on theory from social entrepreneurship and property rights, we develop a conceptual framework regarding property rights allocation for social enterprises seeking to co-create value with beneficiary communities. We propose that while community ownership and control of key resources is ideal, limitations arise when (1) the community fails to perceive a positive tradeoff between value and risk and (2) when there is a lack of community consensus regarding resource use. Under these circumstances, the community will not be incentivized to make the necessary specific investments to fully leverage resources, and alternate governance arrangements may be preferable. We seek to contribute to the literature by expanding the focus of social enterprise governance beyond boards, by exploring the role of consensus, incentives, and specific investments in social enterprise governance, and by expanding the focus of property rights theory to dyadic relationships as we relax strict assumptions of self-interest.