Dependence and Resourcefulness: A Typology of Social Impact Scaling Strategies

Social entrepreneurs face the challenge of resource constraints that affect their ability to scale social impact and expand in various geographical locations. In order to overcome resource barriers and to scale up social impact, social ventures deploy resources currently owned, and form distinct partnerships to acquire new resources, and hence implement unique strategies to achieve a pre-determined social impact. Through the lens of the Resource Based View (RBV) and Resource Dependency Theory (RDT), this paper explores the current discourse on social venture growth and scale-up strategies, and employs a grounded theory approach on 20 social ventures in Egypt to further develop a matrix for social ventures' scale-up strategies based on resources' availability. In addition, the paper introduces a typology of social impact scaling strategies given social ventures' social impact objectives.