A market approach to social value co-creation: Findings and implications from “Mageires” the social restaurant

Abstract

Literature on social entrepreneurship provides a limited understanding of how to generate social value. The article expands on a “learning with the market” approach for developing a framework, explaining how social entrepreneurs can manage, get engaged with, form, and create (new) markets for co-creating social value and transformation. The applicability and implications of the framework are examined through a case study of a social restaurant (Mageires). Data collected from various restaurant stakeholders (customers, employees, suppliers, owners/founders, and other business partners) identified three market capabilities for generating social value and change: network structure (building networks with various stakeholders), market practices (e.g. institutionalization of “new currencies” for conducting economic transactions, adoption of ethical, flexible, and all inclusive recruiting practices), and market pictures (e.g. use of a common terminology and performance metrics and generation of stakeholders’ dialogues for creating intersubjective meanings).