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- Nonprofit Board Governance Research Project
- Pathways to Social Impact: Strategies for Expansion, Replication, and Dissemination in the Social Sector
- Effects of Out-of-School Learning Sites for Youth on Disadvantaged Communities
- The Effects of Nonprofit Versus For-Profit Ownership: Private Choices and Public Policy in Health Care
- National Bureau for Economic Research (NBER) Project on Nonprofit Organizations
- Summary Database of Select Financial Characteristics of Silicon Valley Nonprofit Organizations
- The Role of Social Innovation Goals in the Private Sector
- The Nonprofit Sector: A Research Handbook (2nd Edition)
- The Political Dimensions of Corporate Social Responsibility
Research Project
The Role of Social Innovation Goals in the Private Sector
This research project is one part of a larger set of projects being conducted by Joanne Martin, Fred H. Merrill Professor of Organizational Behavior,Stanford Graduate School of Business. The focus of all these projects is on a large, publicly owned corporation (which shall be unnamed), with retail outlets in several dozen countries. The company is unusual in its much-publicized commitment to a set of core values that foster social innovation, including local community and international political activism, as well as environmental responsibility. Like other (usually smaller) corporations that have similar social innovation agendas, this company has been much scrutinized by the popular press and other media. Some media observers are laudatory; others highly critical. Some of the critics claim that the company espouses social innovation commitments in order to maximize their profits; these critics are highly critical whenever a lapse in these commitments is alleged or observed. The company responds that such lapses are both exceedingly rare and inevitable. A few critics condemn the company not because it doesn't enact its values fully, but because it has these values in the first place. For example, some critics claim that the values, if enacted would represent a misuse of profits for social change or environmental goals—that could and should have gone to benefit shareholders. The company, in response, argues that shareholders are told the company's social and environmental goals, and if they disapprove, they should not buy the stock.
From this brief snapshot of the controversies swirling around this company's social innovation mission, it is clear that the company is an excellent site for examining the role of social innovation in the private sector. To the extent that social innovation and business efficiency goals conflict, which takes precedence when? And why? How does the company maintain its commitment to an agenda for social innovation while responding successfully to the financial realities of a highly competitive marketplace? How do social innovation goals have to be modified, or should they be modified, to conform to differing international contexts? How does the company try to balance these competing pressures, in an international context, and ensure that its social innovation commitments are translated into action, and are not just empty rhetoric?
In order to get meaningful and deep answers to such questions, Professor Martin decided to conduct a long-term ethnographic study of the company, at retail outlets in the U.S. and at retail outlets and the company headquarters in Europe. In addition to observation of individuals and groups and work, she and her research assistant worked alongside employees, and conducted extensive interviews on and offsite. Archival materials and documents were also studied. The first draft of a journal article, focusing on the social innovation aspects of this larger project should be finished in the Fall of 2001.
