The Importance of Social Enterprises in Ensuring the Supply Chains Sustainability

Social enterprises have an increasingly important role lately. While connecting with different partners, social enterprises can drive growth and wealth creation beyond their organization. This value creation may derive from tangible offerings of social enterprises, their goods, and services; but also in intangible relational values. One of these intangible value creation elements is social capital with all its dimensions. Through the social capital which broadly refers to the resources accumulated through the relationships among people and organizations, social enterprises can also contribute and build partner competitive advantage. Institutional and social capital theories can help to understand how social enterprises can contribute and transform sustainable supply chains. This article introduces a framework that seeks to understand social enterprise and entrepreneurship capabilities in transforming institutions to strengthen supply chain sustainability and briefly gives some preliminary findings related to social capital and supply chains. This article relies on case analysis and seeks to understand social enterprise and entrepreneurship capabilities in transforming institutions to strengthen supply chain sustainability in order to promote sustainable fire prevention service and overcome new fire risks.