How do partnerships lead to a competitive advantage? Applying the resource based view to nascent social ventures

This dissertation is one of the earliest to systematically apply and empirically test the resource-based view (RBV) in the context of nascent social ventures in a large scale study. Social ventures are entrepreneurial ventures organized as nonprofit, for-profit, or hybrid organizations whose primary purpose is to address unmet social needs and create social value. Nascent social ventures face resource gaps and engage in partnerships or alliances as one means to access external resources. These partnerships with different sectors facilitate social venture innovative and earned income strategies, and assist in the development of adequate heterogeneous resource conditions that impact competitive advantage. Competitive advantage in the context of nascent social ventures is achieved through the creation of value and the achievement of venture development activities and launching. The relationships between partnerships, heterogeneous resource conditions, strategies, and competitive advantage are analyzed in the context of nascent social ventures that participated in business plan competitions. A content analysis of 179 social venture business plans and an exploratory follow-up survey of 72 of these ventures are used to analyze these relationships using regression, ANOVA, correlations, t-tests, and non-parametric statistics. The findings suggest a significant positive relationship between competitive advantage and partnership diversity, heterogeneous resource conditions, social innovation, and earned income. Social capital is the type of resource most significantly related to competitive advantage. Founder previous start-up experience, client location, and business plan completeness are also found to be significant in the relationship between partnership diversity and competitive advantage. Finally the findings suggest that hybrid social ventures create a greater competitive advantage than nonprofit or for-profit social ventures. Consequently, this dissertation not only provides academics further insight into the factors that impact nascent social value creation, venture development, and ability to launch, but also offers practitioners guidance on how best to organize certain processes to create a competitive advantage. As a result more insight is gained into the nascent social venture creation process and how these ventures can have a greater impact on society.

Social Capital and International Migration from Latin America

We combine data from the Latin American Migration Project and the Mexican Migration Project to estimate models predicting the likelihood of taking of first and later trips to the United States from five nations: Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Peru. The models test specific hypotheses about the effects of social capital on international migration and how these effects vary with respect to contextual factors. Our findings confirm the ubiquity of migrant networks and the universality of social capital effects throughout Latin America. They also reveal how the sizes of these effects are not uniform across settings. Social capital operates more powerfully on first as opposed to later trips and interacts with the cost of migration. In addition, effects are somewhat different when considering individual social capital (measuring strong ties) and community social capital (measuring weak ties). On first trips, the effect of strong ties in promoting migration increases with distance whereas the effect of weak ties decreases with distance. On later trips, the direction of effects for both individual and community social capital is negative for long distances but positive for short distances.

The relative influence of social support, rehabilitation program participation, and inmate preincarceration characteristics on incarcerated substance abusers' perceptions of adjustment to community reintegration

This dissertation identifies, examines, and assesses the relative influence of identified empirically and conceptually relevant variables on incarcerated substance abusers' expectations of postrelease adjustment. A purposive sampling procedure was used to recruit 101 male and female substance-abusing offenders participating in prison- and jail-based drug treatment programs in south Florida. A 92-item survey questionnaire was used to collect basic demographic data; measure inmate preincarceration characteristics, social support, and rehabilitation program participation; and record archival data. Regression equations were developed utilizing ten different measures of the participants' expectations of their postrelease adjustment. Two equations yielded statistically significant F ratios; maintaining a stable living and maintaining abstinence. Twenty-two percent of the variance in respondents' expectations of maintaining a stable living was explained by preincarceration characteristics, social support, and rehabilitation program participation (F = 1.89; df = 13,87; p $<$.05). The only significant predictor variable was perception of social support (b = $-$.05; t = $-$3.6; p $<$.001). Twenty-three percent of the variance in respondents' expectations of maintaining abstinence from substances was explained by preincarceration characteristics, social support, and rehabilitation program participation (F = 2; df = 13,87; p $<$.05). Once again, the only significant predictor variable was perception of social support. The results of the analyses indicate that social support was the only important variable for understanding these respondents' efficacy expectations of postrelease abstinence and stable living. The results of this investigation demonstrate the complexity of the social support variable for prisoners, and identify social support as a potential rehabilitative resource for substance-abusing inmates. The results of this investigation underscore the importance of continued, detailed empirical study in order to understand and clarify how social support, efficacy expectations, and actual postrelease performance interrelate for this population of offenders.