Journal of Management-2016-Stephan-0149206316633268.pdf (1.32 MB)
Organizations driving positive social change: a review and an integrative framework of change processes.
journal contribution
posted on 2016-04-04, 11:10 authored by Ute Stephan, Mike Patterson, Ciara Kelly, Johanna MairAcademic and practitioner interest in how market-based organizations can drive positive social
change (PSC) is steadily growing. This paper helps to recast how organizations relate to society.
It integrates research on projects stimulating PSC—the transformational processes to advance
societal well-being—that is fragmented across different streams of research in management and related disciplines. Focusing on the mechanisms at play in how organizations and their projects
affect change in targets outside of organizational boundaries, we (1) clarify the nature of PSC
as a process, (2) develop an integrative framework that specifies two distinct PSC strategies, (3)
take stock of and offer a categorization scheme for change mechanisms and enabling organizational
practices, and (4) outline opportunities for future research. Our conceptual framework
differentiates between surface- and deep-level PSC strategies understood as distinct combinations
of change mechanisms and enabling organizational practices. These strategies differ in the
nature and speed of transformation experienced by the targets of change projects and the resulting
quality (pervasiveness and durability), timing, and reach of social impact. Our findings
provide a solid base for integrating and advancing knowledge across the largely disparate
streams of management research on corporate social responsibility, social entrepreneurship,
and base of the pyramid and open up important new avenues for future research on organizing
for PSC and on unpacking PSC processes.
History
School
- Business and Economics
Department
- Business
Published in
Journal of ManagementVolume
42Issue
5Pages
1250-1281Citation
STEPHAN, U. ... et al, 2016. Organizations driving positive social change: a review and an integrative framework of change processes. Journal of Management, 42 (5), pp. 1250-1281.Publisher
Sage (© the authors)Version
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Acceptance date
2016-01-22Publication date
2016-02-29Notes
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).ISSN
0149-2063eISSN
1557-1211Publisher version
Language
- en