Suchergebnisse

Purpose
This study responds to the need in social entrepreneurship research for more empirical studies to clarify the meaning of social value. Specially, it aims to explore the meaning of social value communicated on social media (SoMe) within the local context of a social enterprise (SE).


Design/methodology/approach
A multimodal social semiotic approach was applied to several hundred Facebook posts of a Finnish SE providing elderly care solutions, complemented by secondary data from high-quality press sources.


Findings
Building on Young's (2006) dimensions of social value and Hidalgo et al.'s (2021) theorisation of social capital in social entrepreneurship, the authors find that an SE draws on multiple levels of social capital on SoMe to express the meaning of the social value it creates.


Research limitations/implications
Although limited to one case, this study provides a deep contextual understanding of how SEs can give meaning to social value and leverage social capital on SoMe to do so.


Practical implications
The authors offer a contextually embedded framework for SEs to communicate social value through media. This approach enables SEs to engage stakeholders more effectively and improve the quality of support for local initiatives.


Social implications
Improvements in SEs' ability to communicate social value will increase their legitimacy, thus enhancing their prospects to survive and create sustained social value.


Originality/value
The authors strengthen the theoretical underpinnings of social value by being among the first to empirically describe its connection to social capital in an SE, thereby deepening previous studies on subjective social value. Methodologically, this study is the first, to the best of the authors' knowledge, to apply social semiotics to research on SEs.

PurposeThis study aims to identify how the personal social capital of opinion leaders contributes to the market adoption of start-up innovations.Design/methodology/approachA design-oriented case study is undertaken with a start-up company focusing on the development and commercialization of innovations in the veterinary market. Based on a literature review, the authors examine the social capital in value creation and the role of opinion leaders and use qualitative methodology and semi-structured in-depth interviews to collect data.FindingsThe adoption of innovations could start with opinion leaders that will later share their experience with other members of the professional community. In turn, social capital allows for creating a collaboration between start-ups and leaders based on a number of specific parameters.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to marketing literature by providing new insights regarding collaboration between start-ups and opinion leaders. The collaboration between opinion leaders and start-ups could be implemented not only in the veterinary industry but also in other industries with minor adaptations. Authors demonstrate how the social capital of external stakeholders may be used as a resource of the company for business development. The main contribution of this study is to demonstrate that social capital could be used as a parameter for the adoption of innovations. The key parameters that allow creating cooperation between start-up and opinion leader have been identified.