Building competitive advantage through social value creation – a comparative case study approach to social entrepreneurship (Przewaga konkurencyjna oparta na wartosci spolecznej – analiza porownawcza czynnikow konkurencyjnosci przedsiebiorstw spolecznych)

Social enterprises possess specific features due to their social mission and high contextuality. The following paper analyzes the phenomenon of social enterprises’ market competitiveness and their creation of competitive advantage. First, the paper discusses various approaches to social entrepreneurship, followed by a depiction of core differences between traditional and social entrepreneurship. Through a comparative analysis of data gathered in three different social enterprises, the article aims at distinguishing specific features of social enterprises competing for access to resources, instruments of competition and factors of their competitiveness. Findings lead to the identification of profound complexity of this phenomenon, which is associated with the necessity of fulfilling expectations of various groups of stakeholders. In the final part of the paper, a model of social enterprises’ competitive advantage has been proposed as a conceptualization of research findings.