Finding the right one: understanding the supplier selection process of social enterprises

Purpose – This study aims to develop an in-depth understanding of how supplier selection helps social enterprises achieve their social missions while maintaining commercial viability.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper applies a multiple-case design to study the supplier selection processes of 15 Dutch social enterprises.

Findings – Social enterprises tend to build supply relationships through existing networks and evaluate suppliers based on value alignment, relationship commitment, resource complementarity, and cost. Depending on the possibility of social value creation in supplier selection, the importance of these criteria varies across different social enterprise models and between key and non-key suppliers. Moreover, suppliers’ long-term relationship commitment can help reconcile tensions between the social and commercial logic of a social enterprise and facilitate impact creation.

Research limitations – Data collection is limited to the perspectives of buyers – the social enterprises. Future research could collect supplier-side data to explore how they engage with social enterprises during the selection process.

Practical implications – Managers of social enterprises can use our research findings as guidance for selecting the most suitable suppliers, while organizations that want to collaborate with social enterprises should actively build network ties to be identified.

Originality/value – We contribute to the cross-sector collaboration literature by showing the underlying reasons for the preference for network reinforcing and indirect networking in supplier identification. We contribute to the social impact supply chain literature by revealing the critical role of supplier selection in shaping collaboration outcomes.