Abstract
This paper explores the agency of multinational corporations that perform social innovation under conditions of institutional complexity and resource constraints. Insights are drawn from a case study of Vodafone Group Plc and Safaricom Kenya Ltd that engaged in mobile money innovation in Kenya. The paper identifies three types of institutional voids that entrepreneurs can exploit to implement a social innovation: market, policy and social voids. Legitimating the social innovation involves appealing to the instrumental needs of target users, early and sustained engagement with policy-makers and redefining meanings of both incumbent and new technologies. The paper argues that spanning institutional voids–which provide entrepreneurial opportunities–also provide contingent legitimation narratives that can be targeted at different audiences. By mobilising insights from institutional theory, this paper provides a fresh perspective of social innovation in a base of the pyramid context.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 369-390 |
| Number of pages | 22 |
| Journal | Industry and Innovation |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 21 Apr 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Vodafone and Safaricom created, and then leveraged a policy void at the interface of commercial banking and telecommunications, two well-established formal market sectors. Financial institutions were licensed and regulated by the Central Bank of Kenya, and therefore, the entry of a mobile operator in the finance space had been inconceivable until then. As the Vodafone head of social innovation reported when referring to the submission of the bid for funding from the Financial Deepening Challenge Fund (FDCF):
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017, © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.