How and Why Do Social and Sustainable Initiatives Scale? A Systematic Review of the Literature on Social Entrepreneurshi
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ORIGINAL PAPER
How and Why Do Social and Sustainable Initiatives Scale? A Systematic Review of the Literature on Social Entrepreneurship and Grassroots Innovation Marion van Lunenburg1 • Karin Geuijen1 • Albert Meijer1
The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Social and sustainable initiatives generally start small and need to scale to create substantial impact. Our systematic review of 133 articles develops a better understanding of this scaling process. From the literature, we conceptualize impact as the result of two different pathways: ‘scaling out’ (extending geographical space or volume) and ‘scaling up’ (influence on public discourses, political agendas and legislation). The review identified strategy, actor characteristics and institutional environment as key factors for scaling. The literature indicates that for strategy a focus on open structures generates speed and higher impact, but we also found critical views on this. The literature shows that the actor characteristics such as the ambition to scale, equal focus on the economic and the social logic, entrepreneurial skills and leadership are positively related to the level of impact. The institutional environment influences actor characteristics and strategy choices and also has a direct effect on the level of social and sustainable impact. Keywords Scaling Social and sustainable initiatives Social impact Social entrepreneurship Grassroots innovation
& Albert Meijer [email protected] 1
Utrecht School of Governance, Bijlhouwerstraat 6, 3511 ZC Utrecht, The Netherlands
Introduction Social and sustainable initiatives generally start small, but some of them manage to create an enormous impact when they scale. Research has shown that local initiatives can form the starting point for processes of transformation by bringing in new ideas and generating public support (Doberstein 2016; Bason 2010; Fung 2015; Geuijen 2014; Cloutier et al. 2015). These initiatives may also have an impact on policies and even transform national and international systems (Seyfang and Smith 2007). At the moment, however, our academic knowledge of scaling these initiatives is limited. There are well-known examples of successful scaling such as the Alzheimer Cafe´ and the Instock Restaurant. At the Alzheimer Cafe´, families meet peers, professionals and students in an informal setting. It started in The Dutch city of Leiden in 1997, and at the moment there are 230 Alzheimer Cafe´s in the Netherlands. The idea has been picked up in other countries as well. The Instock restaurant prepares high-quality meals from wasted ingredients. In 2015, four ambitious employees of a big supermarket in the Netherlands started it, and meanwhile, they have not only increased the number of restaurants, but also put food waste on the political and public agenda. These examples are highly interesting, but an academic understanding of these successful forms of scaling is lacking. Scaling local initiatives turns out to be rather difficult (Hermans et al. 2016). How, why and under what conditions initiative
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