Inhibiting Factors of Scaling up the Impact of Social Entrepreneurial Organizations -- A Comprehensive Framework and Empirical Results for Germany

This paper proposes an analytical framework for understanding the inhibiting factors in scaling the social impact of social entrepreneurial organizations (SEOs). The framework distinguishes the relevant actors on different levels (leaders, organization, ecosystem) and suggests (pre)conditions from their perspectives (willingness, ability, admission) that are crucial for scaling processes. It further argues that those (pre)conditions are determined by three social forces (cognitive frames, social networks, and institutions) as proposed by Beckert (2010) in his social grid model. The framework is applied and tested by empirically analysing current inhibiting factors for scaling SEOs' impact in Germany, a state with a highly regulated social welfare field. The empirical analysis is based on semi-structured interviews with 16 German SEOs, being mainly young and small pioneer organizations. It identifies a wide range of inhibiting factors, showing that the German welfare system imposes specific barriers for scaling innovative ideas of smaller SEOs. The findings are discussed against previous research conducted in English-speaking institutional contexts and set out implications and suggestions for further research.