EMBEDDING RESOURCES IN NEW SOCIAL BUSINESS VENTURES: A NETWORK INTERACTION APPROACH
Nicole Lillinia, Alessandro Cintib, Valerio Temperinic
aUniversità degli Studi di Perugia, Faculty of Economics, Department of Economics, Via Alessandro Pascoli, 20, Perugia (PG), Italy, nicole.lillini@unipg.it
bUniversità Politecnica delle Marche, Faculty of Economics, Department of Management, Piazzale Martelli Raffaele, 8, Ancona (AN), Italy, alessandro.cinti@staff.univpm.it
cUniversità Politecnica delle Marche, Faculty of Economics,, Department of Management, Piazzale Martelli Raffaele, 8, Ancona (AN), Italy, v.temperini@univpm.it
Abstract
The formation of social business ventures often occurs under conditions of significant resource and competence constraints, mainly when initiated by entrepreneurs with disabilities. These ventures challenge conventional entrepreneurial processes by relying on alternative mechanisms for mobilising and configuring resources. This paper investigates how resources interface during the emergence of a new social business venture developed within a using setting, where the entrepreneur acts primarily as a user of existing institutional and organisational arrangements. The study aims to examine how resource interaction processes enable the creation of a viable business venture in contexts characterised by limited initial endowments. Drawing on the Network Interaction Approach developed within the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) tradition, the research employs a single-case study methodology, focusing on a social business venture founded by an entrepreneur with a disability. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, document analysis, and network mapping to trace the interaction patterns across market and non-market contexts. The findings reveal that the creation of the venture was not solely the result of individual agency but rather emerged through a complex web of resource reconfiguration and embedding processes involving public institutions, family networks, non-profit actors, and market-based relationships. Resource heterogeneity and institutional proximity were found to be crucial in enabling the transformation of dispersed resources into coherent combinations. The study concludes that social business emergence in using settings depends on the entrepreneur’s capacity to activate and sustain inter-organisational relationships that compensate for structural constraints. By extending the application of the Network Interaction Approach to the field of social entrepreneurship, the paper offers theoretical insights into how ventures can be formed through networked resource mobilisation under conditions of adversity. It also provides implications for managerial practice and public policy, emphasising the importance of fostering supportive resource interfaces in the context of inclusive and socially oriented economic initiatives.
Keywords: Social enterprise; Social entrepreneurships; Business networks; Resource combining; Network Interaction Approach; New business ventures
To be cited as: Lillini, N., Cinti, A. and Temperini, V. (2025) Embedding resources in new social business ventures: A network interaction approach.International Journal of Management Courses, 27(1), pp. 15-25.