Behavioral search and configurations of social impact

Author: Hans Rawhouser (University of Nevada)

Abstract: Social enterprises can choose among several types of pro-social activities to achieve social impact-related strategic goals. Interdependencies between these activities affect how well different combinations of social impact activities achieve these goals. We utilize fsQCA of the B Impact Assessments of 1783 B Corps to identify unique configurations of five types of social impact activities to achieve two specific social performance outcomes: (1) achieving B Corp certification with minimal social impact activity and (2) achieving distinction as a top-performing B Corp. We describe distinct social impact configurations leading to each outcome and abduce that they result from two different search processes: social impact-satisficing search, leading to broader configurations of social impact activities, and social impact-guided search, leading to more focused configurations of social impact activities.

Host: Frank-Martin Belz