Corporate Social Venturing: An Agenda for Researching the Social Dimension of Corporate Venturing by Family-Owned Businesses

Research Design

In this chapter, the authors, therefore, address the paradox mentioned above via a three-fold purpose: First, to briefly outline ‘corporate venturing’ (CV) as a sub-field within ‘corporate entrepreneurship’ that recently has gained prominence in research on FOB. Second, to highlight the lacking social dimension in research on FOB focused on CV, conceptualize this added social dimension of CV as ‘corporate social venturing’ (CSV) and to empirically illustrate CSV with well-known Mexican FOB engaging in CSV. Third, to propose an agenda for researching CSV by FOB. Figure 1 summarizes the funneling down on how each concept is connected to our three-fold approach (‘three steps’).

Figure 1.

Conceptual map on how various concepts are connected to our three steps

Source: The Authors

The first and second steps are conceptual and empirical contributions upon which we will base our claims. The third step (based on but moving beyond the first and second steps) is a propositional contribution formulated as a model for future research in line with Claveau & Vergara Fernández (2015, p. 405) that analyze “the epistemic contributions of models by distinguishing three roles that they might play: an evidential role, a revealing role and a stimulating role”.