The Phoenix Effect - Rising from Crisis through Digital Collaboration: How Crisis affects Social Enterprises’ Digitalization for Value Co-Creation [védés előtt]

Kivonat, rövid leírás

Relevance of social entrepreneurs in rural destination development is also important. It is hard for rural regions to sustain communities and attract tourists. Thus, it is often social businesses that are involved in developing innovative and creative ideas, products and services. Mottiar, Boluk, and Kline (2018) carried out interviews in rural Ireland, USA and South Africa. They identified that social business leaders are like opportunists, catalysts, network architects, and have significant impact on tourism and rural development (Mottiar, Boluk, & Kline, 2018). Another research suggested that role of social businesses is essential for empowering women of rural regions. Like other unprivileged groups, women of rural regions can also be vulnerable social groups with high risk of social exclusion and poverty. Simultaneously, research results depicted that women don’t lag far behind men with regard to creating new business ideas and following business opportunities. Fortitude, common help and sharing of business threats and obligations, which come with social business, may empower ladies in provincial zones to enter and support in innovative activities (Vidovic, Peric, & Jozanc, 2015). Our contemporary world also empowers digitalization which is defined as a rise in the usage of computer or digital technology by an organization, industry or country (Brennen & Kreiss, 2016). Albeit digitalization can significantly affect entrepreneurship, there is yet restricted information about its results (Elia et al., 2020). Therefore, more studies are required to see the results of digital transformation and its connection with social businesses more obviously. Furthermore, other than digitalization, social entrepreneurship also can use the process of value co-creation (Lin et al., 2019) which is the joint creation of value by the enterprise and the customers, letting them to co-construct service experience to adjust their needs (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004). That is why, the theoretical positioning of this thesis is not only embed to the literature of social enterprises; but also, the phenomena of digitalization or digital transformation (hereinafter DT) and value co-creation (VCC) is the other main viewpoints to be looked at. Thus, the aim of this doctoral thesis and 3 studies in it is to investigate the relationships between digitalization and value co-creation in the context of social entrepreneurship. In the initial research, social entrepreneurship, digitalization and value co-creation – three compatible streams of literature – are connected with each other.