Intersectoral relations in social organizations: scenario of scientific production on the bibliometric approach

Relações intersetoriais em organizações sociais: cenário da produção científica pela abordagem bibliométrica

Geisa Magna Bezerra Torres - E-mail: geisambtorres@gmail.com, Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4898-7302, Afiliação Insitucional: Universidade Federal de Campina Grande -Paraíba - Brasil. Titulação: Mestrado em Administração pela Universidade Federal de Campina Grande (UFCG) - Programa de Pós-Graduação em Administração (PPGA) -Campina Grande - Paraíba – Brasil
Suzanne Érica Nóbrega Correia - E-mail: suzanne.enc@gmail.com, Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3613-234X, Afiliação Insatitucional Universidade Federal de Campina Grande Paraíba – Brasil, Titulação: Pós-doutora em Administração pela UFPB. Doutora em Administração pela UFPE, Professora da Unidade Acadêmica de Administração e Contabilidade da UFCG -Campina Grande - Paraíba - Brasil

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Abstract 

Organizational forms that prioritize the creation of social value increasingly resort to multiple activities, actors and sectors to deal with the complexity of socio-economic problems. In turn, intersectoral partnerships are formed to strategically achieve social and economic objectives. In this sense, to better understand the congruence between the phenomena involved, the objective of this study is to map the scientific production of intersectoral partnerships in social organizations, through a bibliometric analysis of publications indexed on the Web of Science in the period 1945-2022. The main results point to a significant increase in scientific interest in the subject in recent years, with the contribution of theoretical and empirical studies, predominantly qualitative. The conceptual and social aspects of social entrepreneurship and the strategic aspects of the collaboration network, as well as the hybrid and innovative character of social organizations and their ability to generate social transformation, stood out as research approaches.

Keywords: Cross-sector partnerships. Social organizations. Bibliometrics.

Resumo 

As formas organizacionais que priorizam a criação de valor social, recorrem cada vez mais a múltiplas atividades, atores e setores para lidar com a complexidade dos problemas socioeconômicos. Por sua vez, parcerias intersetoriais são formadas visando alcançar estrategicamente os objetivos sociais e econômicos. Nesse sentido, para melhor compreender a congruência entre os fenômenos envolvidos, o objetivo deste estudo é mapear a produção científica sobre parcerias intersetoriais em organizações sociais, por meio de uma análise bibliométrica das publicações indexadas na Web of Science no período 1945-2022. Os principais resultados apontam um aumento significativo no interesse científico sobre a temática nos últimos anos, com a contribuição de estudos teóricos e empíricos, predominantemente qualitativos. Os aspectos conceituais e sociais do empreendedorismo social e os aspectos estratégicos da rede de colaboração, bem como o caráter híbrido e inovador das organizações sociais e sua capacidade de gerar transformação social, destacaram-se como abordagens de pesquisa.

Keywords: Parcerias intersetoriais. Organizações sociais. Bibliometria.

1. Introduction

Given the difficulties economic, social, environmental and political challenges of recent decades, much has been discussed about the convergence of the action of multiple stakeholders in the search for viable and efficient solutions to society's problems. In this context, the pressure and complexity of the socioeconomic problems faced by global society, on an ever-increasing scale, transcend the capacities of organizations and sectors to adequately respond to these new demands individually (EL-CHAARANI, 2021).

At the same time, there is also growing interested in the social role of new organizational forms that emerge as an alternative to the conventional market model and that make sustainable development viable. With distinct characteristics that are not limited to the pursuit of profitability, these organizations are mainly aimed at creating social value, and can take multiple forms (MAIR; MARTÍ, 2006; ZUR, 2021). Therefore, a plurality of terms is used to describe social organizations, which aim to solve socio-environmental problems using market mechanisms, such as: social enterprises, social businesses, inclusive businesses, social entrepreneurship and hybrid organizations (BARKI; RODRIGUES; COMINI, 2020; OKANO et al., 2022).

Despite the narratives of social entrepreneurship being dominated by the performance of the individual entrepreneur, efforts have been directed to approach it also as a collaborative practice (KOVANEN, 2021; MONTGOMERY; DACIN; DACIN, 2012), configuring a viable and indispensable condition to fulfill with its social objectives and ensure its financial sustainability.

Intersectoral partnerships, in turn, gain space by promoting the combination of different responsibilities and capacities that actors from different sectors have. By involving collaborations between government, companies and third sector organizations, intersectoral partnerships, also known as social alliances or intersectoral collaborations, have the main purpose of addressing complex causes and problems, in the social and environmental spheres (CLARKE; CRANE, 2018; SELSKY; PARKER, 2005). In this way, in line with the new business models, the partnerships demonstrate the urgency for a systemic approach to sustainability and social responsibility practices among the actors that comprise the three sectors of the economy.

Since the creation of collaboration tends to accelerate and become one of the preferred organizational modalities to face the dilemmas of the 21st century (AUSTIN; SEITANIDI, 2012), it becomes necessary to develop the theoretical field of intersectoral social partnerships to better understand the interfaces of this collaborative practice. Recently, in a systematic review of the literature, Kovanen (2021) addressed collaboration in social entrepreneurship in the European context, in which he identified community and public sector collaboration, collaboration for resources and jobs, and network-level collaboration as the three main lines of research in the area.

However, it is essential to understand the congruence between the phenomena of social organizations and the intersectoral partnerships developed in the scientific field in a more comprehensive and joint way, given that, despite the advances and growing academic interest shown in recent years, it is still a topic which lacks theoretical consolidation and greater clarity regarding its terms, definitions and aspects. In this way, the schematization of studies already carried out and their contributions can produce insights for conducting new studies that strengthen the field of research and its understanding.

In this sense, this article aims to map the scientific production of intersectoral partnerships in social organizations, from a bibliometric approach, considering the Web of Science (WoS) database. With this, we intend to identify the historical evolution of publications indexed in the WoS platform, who are the main authors that contribute to the theme, which are the most influential articles and journals, the most frequent terms from the co-occurrence map and how the co-citation network is configured, providing an overview of the phenomena addressed together.

Therefore, it is expected to contribute to studies that deal with the theme of social organizations and intersectoral collaboration, being able to help researchers to understand the current scenario of productions on the subject, make decisions for future research and publications, as well as to stimulate debates that enrich the field. . Furthermore, the study can lead to the emergence of new intersectoral relationships aimed at the development of strategic actions between entrepreneurs, social organizations, development institutions and public authorities.

The article is structured as follows: in the next section, a theoretical discussion is carried out on collaborative relationships in social organizations. In the third section, the methodological aspects used in conducting the research are detailed. This methodological description opens the way to the fourth section, in which the results are presented and analyzed. Finally, the last section is dedicated to final considerations, limitations and future recommendations.

2 Theoretical Reference

The new types of organizations that have, since their conception, the creation of social value as their main objective, are innovative business models that seek to solve or at least mitigate the socio-environmental problems experienced (BARKI; RODRIGUES; COMINI, 2020). However, there is no consensus regarding the models and typologies related to organizations with social purposes, nor their nomenclature, and a plurality of terms can be adopted - social enterprises, social businesses, inclusive businesses and social enterprises, for example - depending on the investigated context (BARKI; RODRIGUES; COMINI, 2020; DEFOURNY; NYSSENS, 2017). Likewise, it is recurrent in the academic field on the subject to highlight the lack of consensus and the breadth of definitions, in addition to a research agenda that is not clearly defined (NICHOLLS, 2010; OKANO et al., 2022; ZUR, 2021).

In the literature, the domain of narratives on social entrepreneurship is centered on the figure of the individual entrepreneur, commonly seen as a hero (MAIR; MARTÍ, 2006; MONTGOMERY; DACIN; DACIN, 2012; NICHOLLS, 2010), in contrast to the second set that locate the social entrepreneurship linked to community environments and which prioritize group or network action (NICHOLLS, 2010). Nicholls (2010) also identified the dominant organizational model for social enterprise, being the one that aligns market logic and strategies to social logic, reflecting the ideal type of social business.

In general, with the mission of creating and sustaining social value, social entrepreneurs play the role of agents of change (DEES, 1998) in communities and societies in which they operate, by adopting business models that offer creative solutions to highly complex social issues (ZAHRA et al., 2009). In view of this, social entrepreneurs need to make strategic decisions, and create and seek opportunities that guarantee the achievement of social or environmental objectives.

Due to the inherent complexity of socio-environmental problems and economic and political pressures, the joining of multiple forces and the promotion of collaboration between different organizations from different sectors of society (BARKI; RODRIGUES; COMINI, 2020) becomes a necessary approach to enable the problem solving and business support. In this way, social entrepreneurship from a broader perspective involves an innovative process and the combination of resources to create social value (MAIR; MARTÍ, 2006), which can occur within or between different sectors (AUSTIN; STEVENSON; WEI–SKILLERN, 2006). 

In this context, intersectoral partnerships have gained prominence in the literature as a new strand of studies related to strategic alliances (SILVA et al., 2020). As a new form of political-economic arrangement, intersectoral partnerships seek to reconcile the best of two worlds: market efficiency and social well-being, wealth creation and social justice (DI DOMENICO; TRACEY; HAUGH, 2009). This form of partnership establishes collaborative actions between organizations from two or more sectors, whose focus is on designing and implementing projects and programs in favor of the community, solving a social problem, serving the marginalized population or defending causes of public interest (CLARKE; CRANE, 2018).

It is understood that, despite strong and diverse reasons to collaborate, partnerships bring together contrasting organizational forms (DI DOMENICO; TRACEY; HAUGH, 2009). This collaborative scenario encompasses organizations and individuals with different perspectives, logic and motivations, which tends to lead, in addition to the benefits of partnerships, to tensions and challenges between allies and business management. It can be said that these challenges and tensions come from the hybrid character of social organizations, which combine conflicting institutional logics, that is, a set of standards that combine actions, values and rules, often antagonistic (BATTILANA; DORADO, 2010; DOHERTY; HAUGH; LYON, 2014), in addition to the different types of organizations involved in partnerships.

Research involving social organizations is characterized by a multidisciplinary approach, as it brings together contributions from different areas of knowledge, such as social, political, environmental and economic sciences, in addition to organizational theory, management, social policy and geography (DOHERTY; HAUGH; LYON, 2014). This characteristic may help to explain the diversity of theoretical lenses that surround the field and the difficulty of reaching a consensus.

Understanding the relationship between social organizations and forms of collaboration, such as intersectoral partnerships, becomes relevant to approach social entrepreneurship as a collaborative practice (KOVANEN, 2021). Although studies have already sought to understand the forms of collaboration and how they work in the context of social organizations, it is also important to know, characterize and evaluate this base of studies that have already been produced within this theme, which may help future research to be better directed. Therefore, the following section outlines the methodological procedures adopted to carry out this research.

3 Methodological Procedures

In order to map the scientific production of intersectoral partnerships in social organizations, the method of bibliometric analysis was adopted, which combines different structures, tools and techniques for analyzing publications (AKHAVAN et al., 2016). The analysis is based on the principles of Bibliometrics, which comprises Bradford's Law (journal productivity), Lotka 's Law (authors' scientific productivity) and Zipf 's Law (word frequency) (GUEDES; BORSCHIVER, 2012).

In the research planning phase, the multidisciplinary Web of Science (WOS) database was chosen and the search keywords comprising the two research fields were determined. The first group of words covers the terms used to define social organizations (“social organization”, “social enterprise”, “social business”, “social entrepreneurship”, “inclusive business”, “hybrid organization”), while the second group maps the field of cross-sector partnerships (“partnership”, “ecosystem”, “triple helix”, “quadruple helix”, “quintuple helix”, “cross -sector”, “alliance”, “collaboration”, “cooperation”). The operator “*” was used to capture the variations of terms and the logical operator “AND” to enable all 54 possible combinations between the groups, as shown in Table 1.

The “Topic” search criterion, which includes the occurrence of terms in the titles, abstracts and keywords of the publications, was determined to broaden the scope of the research. In order to understand the evolution of congruence between the themes, the period of analysis was not limited, with all the years available in the database (1945-2022) being searched.

Table 1 - Combination of keywords in the initial search

Source : Survey data (2022).

The collection stage was carried out in June 2022, returning 1,981 documents in the initial search (Table 1). From this, for the purposes of refinement and to better meet the proposed objective, filters were applied to the results, restricting them to only articles (excluding the “early acess”), belonging to the categories “business”, “management”, “economics”, “public administration” and other related areas. Finally, repeated articles were excluded, totaling 478 articles in the final database. Figure 1 summarizes the collection steps in the database described here.

Figure 1 - Research Stages

Source: Survey data (2022).

            Data analyzes were performed with the help of the software VOSviewer ©, version 1.6.16, for viewing and building bibliometric maps, allowing the evaluation of clusters (VAN ECK; WALTMAN, 2017). For that, the bibliometric data were recorded as “Complete Record and Cited References” and exported from the WoS platform in a tab-delimited file format, being later added to the VOSviewer. Microsoft Excel was also used to enable the consolidation of data and the construction of tables.

4 Analysis and Discussion of Results

To achieve the purpose of the article, the final database composed of 478 articles was mapped and analyzed, using the tools provided by VOSviewer, regarding the following aspects: the evolution of publications, represented by the number of records in the area; the authors who publish the most and the most cited; the most influential articles and periodicals and, finally, the analysis of clusters of the most frequent terms and co-citation networks.      

4.1 Number of publications

Despite not having a limited period of time in the database, the query registered results from the year 1987, with only one publication. The article entitled “Public -Private Cooperation and hybrid Organizations”, authored by Emmert and Crow (1987), and published by the Journal of Management, sought to examine the nature and role of hybrid organizations as coordination mechanisms in the interaction between the public and private sectors. Despite the pioneering nature of the work, the publication has only 5 citations among the documents analyzed.

After the registration of the first publication on the subject, there is a gap of 5 years until the second article in 1992, maintaining a rhythm between one and two publications until the year 2005. From then on, the publications showed a growth trend, but with significant fluctuations until the consultation date in 2022. Figure 2 shows the evolution in the number of publications over the 36 years of research indexed in WoS that make up the sample.

Figure 2 - Evolution of publications

Source: Survey data (2022).

It appears that the peak of publications occurred in 2020 with 64 publications, that is, 13% of the total records. The most influential work of this period, with 27 citations in the analyzed database, is the article published by the Journal of Business Ethics, entitled “Including Business at the Base of the Pyramid: The Role of Embeddedness for Enabling Social Innovations ” by Lashitew , Bals and van Tulder (2020), which is a qualitative study that sought to understand how social innovations emerge and sustain themselves in business organizations, revealing a strong role of local networks and structures to initiate and implement the initiatives.

It is pertinent to note that the period between 2012 and 2022 represented an important expansion of studies when analyzing the total number of publications, totaling 430 articles, which corresponds to approximately 90% of the sample, and more specifically 368 publications in the last 7 years. (2016-2021 period), that is, about 77% of the selected articles. Therefore, it is possible to suggest that the topic remains in evidence, demonstrating an increase in studies that cover the theme, since until the month of June 2022 there is already a significant number of publications - 35 articles.

4.2 Most productive and cited authors

Due to the relevance and trend of studies in the area, it is necessary to identify and analyze the main authors that focus on the subject, according to their level of productivity and citation. A total of 1,234 authors were identified, of which only 77 have two or more publications in the scope of the research, which represents only 6.24% of the total number of authors. This fragmentation in relation to authors may be an indication that the area is in a consolidation phase, which can be observed in the quantitative evolution of the number of recent publications.

Based on the 10 most productive authors in the area in the period 1987-2022, with the exception of Loosemore, M. who stands out with 4 published articles, the other authors presented 3 publications, distinguishing only in the number of citations, as shown in Table 2. It is noteworthy that among the authors, Carsrud, AL and Meyskens, M. has the highest citation rate per publication (79.33).

Table 2 - Most productive authors

Source: Survey data (2022).

The author Loosemore, M. stood out for having the largest number of articles published in the area, the author is also the only one who is not linked to institutions concentrated in the United States or Europe. His work in the field focuses on investigating social enterprises in the construction industry, in particular social procurement practices through cross-sector collaboration. Of the 4 works produced, the one with the greatest impact was published in partnership with Barraket, J., under the title “Co-creating social value through cross -sector collaboration between social enterprises and the construction industry” in 2018. However, the aforementioned author does not make up the ranking of the 10 most cited authors, as shown in Table 3.

Table 3 - Most cited authors

Source: Survey data (2022).

In comparison, only Carsrud, AL, Meyskens, M. and Tracey, P. also stand out in the list of the 10 most cited authors in the area (Table 3). Similar to the productivity ranking, most of the most cited authors are concentrated in institutions in the United States (4) and Europe (3), but they are dispersed in relation to the universities they are affiliated with. Nevertheless, Carsrud, AL and Meyskens, M. are from different universities and based in different countries, but have 3 articles published in partnership among the analyzed publications, one of them being of high impact. Lerner, M. and Sharir, M. are from different universities, but based in the same country, and have an article published in partnership among the analyzed publications, which is also evaluated as having a high impact (Table 4).

4.3 Most Influential Articles

Regarding the most cited publications in the area of social organizations and intersectoral partnerships, the citation scores of the articles identified through the software were considered CitNetExplorer. We chose to select high-impact studies for the publication network, evaluated by the H-Index or H-Index, which measures productivity and the impact of work in a survey based on the most cited publications (HIRSCH, 2005). Thus, 13 studies were selected that presented a minimum value of 13 in their citation score, that is, an H-Index = 13, according to Table 4.

Table 4 - Most cited articles

Source: Survey data (2022).

Analyzing Table 4, it is noted that about 62% of the studies (8 articles) were published in the year 2012, a period that marks the expansion of studies on the subject. In addition, researchers Carsrud, AL, Meyskens, M. and Tracey, P. are the only authors with works of the greater impact that are also in the ranking of the most productive and most cited at the same time. It is also possible to verify that the list is composed of empirical and theoretical studies, predominantly qualitative, and that most of them point to new concepts and propositions, frameworks, models and typologies in their results, effectively contributing to the advancement of the investigated theoretical field.

The article “Collective social entrepreneurship: collaboratively shaping social good”, with the highest citation score (72), by Montgomery, Dacin and Dacin (2012), expands the debate on social entrepreneurship by suggesting studying it through a collective lens involving collaborative actions. In this sense, the concept of collective social entrepreneurship is proposed, understood as the collaboration between similar and diverse actors that aims to solve social problems by applying business principles. Using exemplary cases, the authors examined collective social entrepreneurship through collaborative action, which included movements, alliances, and markets for the social good. Among the main results, three interconnected strategic activities were identified that mobilize collaborative social entrepreneurship: framing, convening and multivocality (MONTGOMERY; DACIN; DACIN, 2012) .

The second most cited article “Navigating paradox as a mechanism of change and innovation in hybrid organizations”, whose author carried out an ethnographic study in a hybrid public-private organization, contributes to the theoretical field by developing a model of an organizational change process that takes place in an interactive and continuous way, illustrating the paradox present in hybrid organizations (JAY, 2013).

The third article on the list is “The dialectic of social exchange: theorizing corporate -social enterprise collaboration”, as well as the articles “Building Partnerships to Create Social and Economic Value at the Base of the Global Development Pyramid” (8th article) and “The symbiosis of entities in the social engagement netword: the role of social ventures” (12th article), develop frameworks to analyze collaborative actions in social organizations and their partners. The first proposes a conceptual framework in which the corporation-social enterprise partnership can evolve in three stages: thesis (exchange of assets and resources), antithesis (tensions and conflicts) and synthesis (reconciliations and creation of new interorganizational arrangements) (DI DOMENICO; TRACEY; HAUGH, 2009). In the second article, three emerging conceptual frameworks are presented to investigate collaborative relationships in the BoP (base of the pyramid): decentralized networks, global action networks and the approach of faces and places (CALTON et al., 2013). While the third conceive a framework of the social engagement network, emphasizing social enterprises in collaboration with other organizations, transactions are based on relationships and not on economic rationality, in which the main actors seek to create and develop economic and social value (MEYSKENS; CARSRUD; CARDOZO, 2010).

In a comparative case study, the fourth article “Gauging the success of social ventures initiated by individual social entrepreneurs”, analyzes 33 Israeli social ventures in search of the identification of key factors that influence the success of social entrepreneurs, being identified 8 variables: social network, total dedication, capital base in the initial phase, acceptance of the idea by the speech public, team composition, collaboration between sectors, ability to withstand the market test and previous managerial experience (SHARIR; LERNER, 2006) .

Similarly, the fifth article listed “Social alliances: business and social enterprise collaboration for social transformation” also presents a qualitative-exploratory approach, aiming to analyze the objectives, contributions and impact of six social alliances between social and private companies in a subsistence context (SAKARYA et al., 2012).

A literature review conducted by Phillips et al. (2015), the only one of the most influential articles, proposes to systematically analyze research on social innovation and social entrepreneurship. The study “Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship: The Systematic Review” pointed out the growing interest in the area in the last decade, the dominance of English-speaking countries in research and the predominance of exploratory and qualitative studies. The authors highlighted the main themes that have received attention from researchers in the area: i) the role of the entrepreneur, ii) networks and systems, iii) intersectoral partnerships and iv ) the role of institutions. They conclude by suggesting that social enterprises and social entrepreneurs exist within a 'social innovation system' (PHILLIPS et al., 2015).

In the study developed by Nicholls and Huybrechts (2016), “Sustaining inter-organizational relationships across institutional logics and power asymmetries: the case of fair trade”, the authors challenge institutional theory and add a new construct related to conflict resolution in institutional logic. Therefore, central factors (propositions) that allow the emergence and persistence of inter-organizational relationships between corporations and fair trade organizations are suggested: the presence of pre-existing 'hybrid logics'; discourses that span borders; joint tolerance of conflict; and co-creation of common rules; which are enabled through the use and presentation of certification systems (NICHOLLS; HUYBRECHTS, 2016). 

The articles “Beyond philanthropy: community enterprise as a basis for corporate citizenship” (9th article) and “The economics of hybrid organizations” (11th article) deal with studies related to governance aspects in social organizations. In the first article, the authors argue that corporate social responsibility governance approaches are not always adequate and propose an alternative structure based on the 'Partnership Approach', which is effective for collaborations with certain characteristics (TRACEY; PHILLIPS; HAUGH, 2005). Regarding the second article, Ménard (2004) proposes a typology of hybrid governance: trust, influence or relational network, leadership and formal governance.

The tenth article, “How hybrid Organizations Turn Antagonistic assets into Complementarities”, adopts the comparative case study, selecting three categories of hybrid organizations (Work Integration Social Enterprises - WISEs, Bottom of the Pyramid - BoP and Fair Trade), in which the author identified hybrid strategies to deal with antagonistic assets and turn them into advantages (HOCKERTS, 2015).

Finally, in the thirteenth study entitled “A multi-organizational cross-sectoral collaboration: empirical evidence from an ' empty homes' Project”, Gillett, Loader, Doherty and Scott (2016), based on empirical evidence from a collaborative project, authors identified a series of challenges and tensions, along with the mechanisms used to manage them, that arise in cross-sector collaborations involving organizations with multiple logics. 

In general, researchers used existing and consolidated theories to support their studies, such as institutional theories, social exchanges, resource dependence, transaction costs, population ecology and the resource-based view. As for the methodological choices, in addition to the predominance of qualitative studies, it was also observed the use of exploratory multi -case studies, ethnography, interviews, participant observation and document analysis.

Thus, it is noted that the studies are directed at two large groups. The first is strongly linked to the perspective of social entrepreneurship, while the second group of studies directs their research to the understanding of organizational hybridity. Finally, the researchers prioritized investigating the relationship of partnerships between social enterprises and corporations, triggering the motivation related to corporate social responsibility.

4.4 Most influential journals

As for the journals that were used to publish the 478 studies in the researched thematic area, 238 scientific journals were mapped. Table 5 presents the 10 most influential journals according to the number of citations, with Ecology being and Society the most cited in the area, with 1580 citations and the second in productivity, with 11 publications. Among the most influential, the Journal of Business Ethics also stands out for presenting the largest number of articles - 14 publications.

Table 5 - Most Influential Journals

Source: Survey data (2022).

Only 4 journals, Ecology and Society, California Management Review, Journal of Business Ethics and Academy of Management Journal, presented a number of more than 500 citations, which indicates that they concentrate on the articles with the greatest impact on the subject. When analyzing the Impact Factor (JCR – Journal Citation Reports) of journals, evaluated in 2021, the California Management Review, with seven publications and 827 citations, has the highest impact factor in the sample (11,678), while Ecology and Society, with the highest number of citation, has a JCR below 5 (4,653). Also, it is worth mentioning that 40% of the most influential journals are North American, which may be associated with the fact that the most productive and cited authors are affiliated with American universities, exerting a strong influence on the thematic area.

4.5 Co-occurrence of more frequent terms

To identify the words with the highest occurrence in the 478 articles that make up the database, a mapping of the co-occurrence network of the most frequent terms in titles and abstracts was carried out with the help of VOSviewer. Of the 11,763 most recurring terms, only 275 met the criterion of appearing at least 15 times. However, VOSviewer considers, for analysis purposes, the set of 60% of the terms found as most relevant, totaling 165 words.

The final result pointed to 115 terms for the final sample after excluding unrepresentative words and with a low relevance score, which “social entrepreneurship” (social entrepreneurship) stands out as the most frequent word (243 times), followed by the words “community” (199 times) and “partnership” (197 times), as illustrated in Figure 3. The most frequent terms were categorized into 4 main streams (clusters) according to the research interests of the authors' network.

Figure 3 - Co-occurrence map of most frequent terms

Source: VOSviewer (2022).

The first cluster (red) – The collaborative aspect – is related to the need for association and combination of capabilities, logic and advantages of different organizations and sectors to deal with the complexity, demand and tensions of social businesses. It also highlights the exchanges and connections between the various social actors. Among the present terms, the following stand out: partnership (partnership), value (value), sector (sector) and network.

The second cluster (blue) – Social Aspect – highlights the role of social entrepreneurship and the role of the social entrepreneur in promoting social change and the satisfaction of social needs at the base of the pyramid and in a subsistence context. Social entrepreneurship, social entrepreneur, ecosystem, bop (base of the pyramid) and social mission are relevant terms in this scenario.

The third cluster (green) – Transformative Character – stands out with the terms community, entrepreneur, experience, survival and combination, representing the ability to generate social transformation by creating collective solutions to problems shared by the community in practice, through entrepreneurial action and social mobilization.

The fourth cluster (yellow) – Innovative character – the terms impact, entrepreneurship, technology, university, investor and growth refer to the innovative and systemic character inherent to the creation of value in social organizations and their networks of interorganizational relationships.

In view of the research scope of the identified clusters, the scientific field that comprises intersectoral relationships in social organizations appears, in general, to be productive in terms of studies related to the collective and collaborative character between social actors, to the inherent social aspects the objective of these organizations, the social transformation generated through the creation of value and the innovative character present in the environment in which the social business is inserted.

4.6 Co-citation Network

Finally, the co-citation relationship network was analyzed, considering at least 20 citations per author as a minimum criterion. Thus, of the 16,894 mapped authors, 108 met the criterion, which was grouped into 3 main clusters (Figure 4).

Figure 4 - Co-citation network

Source: VOSviewer (2022).

The first cluster (red) – Conceptual aspects – is composed of 57 authors, especially Mair, J. (149), Dees, JG (125), Nicholls, A. (107), Defourny, J. (93) and Zahra, SA (84) as the most cited. The research focus of most of these authors is on the conceptual aspects of social entrepreneurship, such as definitions, typologies, characteristics and approaches, in addition to the efforts to differentiate them from other types of entrepreneurship. In this sense, different perspectives and definitions surround the field of social entrepreneurship (DEES, 1998; MAIR; MARTÍ, 2006), however, it is inherent to characterize it as an innovative activity that creates social value (AUSTIN; STEVENSON; WEI–SKILLERN, 2006). Thus, social entrepreneurship encompasses activities and processes to discover, define and explore opportunities that generate social wealth (ZAHRA et al., 2009).

In the second cluster (green), - Strategy and collaboration - consisting of 29 researchers, the most relevant are Eisenhardt, KM (134), Prahalad CK (71), Porter, ME (69), Ostrom, E. (61), Austin, JE (60) and Williamson, OE (55). From a strategic point of view, corporate social responsibility practices, collaborative forms between organizations and sectors, and aspects of shared value are discussed. In this way, the ability of partnerships and collaborations between organizations, for-profit and not-for-profit, is placed as a powerful means of achieving the social and economic mission and a way to promote corporate social responsibility (AUSTIN, 2000; PORTER; KRAMER, 2011).

The third cluster (blue) – Distinct institutional logics – has 22 authors, the main ones being Battilana, J. (146), Pache, AC (67), Tracey, P. (55), Thornton, PH (42) and Greenwood, R. (35). The studies are aimed at understanding organizational hybridity, given its complexity, tensions and conflicting logics. Organizational hybridism, understood as a new organizational form, combines distinct institutional logic (BATTILANA; DORADO, 2010) in a systemic way, selectively extracting elements from each logic (PACHE; SANTOS, 2013). Therefore, it requires entrepreneurs to deal with a particularly complex form of entrepreneurship with characteristics that may have little in common and with the potential to generate conflicts (TRACEY; PHILLIPS; JARVIS, 2011).

Thus, after the identification and analysis of the co-citation network, it is possible to configure it in three aspects – conceptual aspects of social entrepreneurship; strategic aspects of social business and hybrid aspects of organizations – which reveal the main directions of research carried out by the scientists that make up the co-citation network.

5 Final Thoughts

With the objective of mapping the scientific production on social organizations and intersectoral partnerships, from publications indexed on the Web of Science in the period 1945-2022, it was possible to identify the general panorama of publications that surround the theme.

In view of the results obtained, it is possible to highlight literature that has not yet been consolidated, but with a growing disposition of scientific production on the subject of intersectoral relations in social organizations, with emphasis on the period of sharp growth in studies from the year 2016 onwards, the moment that marks the rise of social businesses, which reveals to be intrinsically related.

Despite a large number of authors present in the publications of the analyzed sample, a limited number of scholars stand out in the investigated area, such as researchers Carsrud, AL, Meyskens, M. and Tracey, P., being the only authors present in the ranking of the most productive, more cited and with works of greater impact, concomitantly. Likewise, there is a concentration of the main, most productive and most cited authors, affiliated with North American and European institutions. While, in the co-citation network, the most influential authors who have citations among themselves are Mair, J. (149), Battilana, J. (146) and Eisenhardt , KM (134).

Despite the dispersion of authors, two theoretical strands stood out: social entrepreneurship and organizational hybridism, evidencing a direction of research in contexts aimed at the search for value creation from the combination of different logics. In addition, studies of collaborative practices between social companies and private companies are predominant, configuring a hybrid context conducive to examining the formation of alliances to create social value in line with market mechanisms. Configuring the list of most influential articles, the contribution of theoretical and empirical studies, and of a qualitative approach, can be seen, with emphasis on those that point to new concepts and propositions, frameworks, models and typologies in their results, effectively contributing to the advancement of the theoretical field investigated.

Cluster analysis showed the multiple aspects that involve social organization and forms of collaboration, with 4 main clusters of content covered in the articles and 3 clusters that constitute the co-citation network, the search for social and conceptual aspects of social entrepreneurship, the strategic aspect in the relationship and collaboration network, the social and economic character of hybrid organizational forms, the ability to generate social transformation through the results and objectives achieved and the innovative character of the systemic environment in which social organizations are inserted.

Considering the limitations of the study, the use of only one base for data collection is evident, which may not reflect the entirety of the literature on the subject, and the failure to read all the articles in the sample in full, which demanded an analysis from the researcher's perspective. It is suggested that future works be carried out using other data platforms to replicate and increase the scope of the investigation, as well as the possibility of carrying out systematic reviews from specific clippings to deepen the discussions.

Even so, the analysis made it possible to identify that social partnerships, despite their relevance in the context of social organizations, are treated in the background in most of the studies evaluated, presenting themselves as a result of the entrepreneurial process. In this way, the scientific field lacks studies that approach intersectoral partnerships as the main element, together with the value creation process. It is therefore expected that future studies will contribute to the literature by investigating how intersectoral relationships can effectively contribute throughout the process of generating social value, including demonstrating how this process takes place from the involvement of various partners in a systemic perspective.

Finally, it is expected that this study can contribute in practice to the development of actions and strategies with entrepreneurs and social organizations, from the panorama highlighted here, as well as guide and intensify the relationship network between companies, academia, government and other institutions that foster the integration between the economic and socio-environmental purposes arising from social businesses.

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