ABSTRACT

Organizational scholars have become increasingly interested in inter-organizational collaboration. This chapter concerns a different form of collaboration: cross-sector collaboration between corporations and social enterprises. These collaborations involve the formation of a political-economic arrangement that seeks to reconcile wealth creation with social justice, and the efficient functioning of markets with the welfare of communities. Non-profit organizations have been encouraged by governments and charitable foundations to move away from reliance on subsidy and donations and generate income through trading. The crux of argument is that corporate-social enterprise collaborations are shaped by the value that each member of the collaboration attributes to the inputs of their partner, the competing practices and priorities intrinsic to the corporation and the social enterprise, and the expected benefits of the collaboration to each partner. Social exchange theory is well established in the social sciences and has recently received renewed attention in management studies.