How A Social Enterprise Wanes: The Transaction Costs of Credible Commitments at Etsy.com

Abstract

This article fathoms how a social enterprise wanes by applying the construct of imperative credible commitments from transaction cost economics to the case of Etsy.com, an online marketplace created to connect artisans and craftwork enthusiasts. In the absence of imperative credible commitments, Etsy’s social mission was bound to change, leaving the company’s major stakeholders without safeguards to protect the perpetuation of the transactions that Etsy was created to serve. The construct of credible commitments has proved to be fertile in understanding issues of political and economic transition, yet its relevance to puzzle out the corporate world has been underestimated. To bridge this gap, we have recourse to the analogy between disabling the discretion of monarchs and executives to prevent them from reneging on commitments. Hence, by building on political economy academics’ attention is drawn to strategies that, despite existing in the corporate world, have rarely been perceived as important by management and economics scholars.