Le modalità secondo cui iniziative imprenditoriali ad elevato impatto sociale possono amplificare il valore sociale creato mediante la propria attività costituisce uno dei temi più rilevanti per quelle imprese che intendono affrontare piaghe sociali ampiamente diffuse quali la povertà, l'accesso all'educazione e la salute. L'elaborato intende contribuire alla letteratura sull'imprenditorialità sociale discutendo le strategie, i modelli organizzativi e le competenze richieste per massimizzare l'ampiezza dell'impatto e aumentare le probabilità di successo. Tali temi sono discussi in tre articoli. Il primo, intitolato “Scaling social entrepreneurial impact: an open innovation perspective” presenta un modello teorico che mette in relazione tre differenti strategie di amplificazione dell'impatto sociale con le probabilità da parte dell'organizzazione di soddisfare le proprie attese in termini di valore creato atteso e di valore potenziale rivelato. Il modello suggerisce una relazione significativa tra l'adozione di confini organizzativi "aperti" e l'attitudine a rivelare nuovo valore potenziale. Inoltre, il grado di affinità tra i contesti in cui l'innovazione sociale è replicata modera tale relazione. Il secondo articolo, intitolato “Ba creation and Ba expansion in academic-practitioner partnerships in the social entrepreneurship field", fa riferimento all' "organizational knowledge creation theory" e propone, tramite un caso di studio longitudinale, un modello che illustra gli antecedenti della creazione e la successiva espansione del "Ba" nel contesto di una partnership tra un ateneo universitario e un'impresa sociale suggerendo in che modo gli attori coinvolti nel processo di creazione della conoscenza possano modificare i propri ruoli per produrre un impatto sociale superiore. Il terzo articolo, intitolato “Scaling Social Impact: A Replication and Extension of SCALERS” contribuisce alla letteratura replicando il primo test del modello SCALERS in un nuovo contesto internazionale (Italia) e sviluppandolo ulteriormente includendo alcune contingenze specifiche quali variabili moderatrici del modello. / Scaling social impact is among the most relevant challenges that social enterprises face in addressing global issues like poverty, access to education and health. The dissertation aims at contributing to social entrepreneurship literature by dealing with quests about how and why specific strategies and organizational models may improve the likelihood and the magnitude of the impact exerted by social organizations and which capabilities are most needed for impact to be scaled. Those issues are discussed along three essays. The first article entitled “Scaling social entrepreneurial impact: an open innovation perspective” presents a theoretical model connecting three strategies for spreading social innovation to organization’s confidence on achieving expected social impact and revealing new potential value. The model predicts that a strong relationship exists between the adoption of an open organizational structure and the attitude to reveal potential social value. Indeed, context similarity moderates this relation. The second article entitled “Ba creation and Ba expansion in academic-practitioner partnerships in the social entrepreneurship field” - by building on organizational knowledge creation theory - advances a model predicting the antecedents of ba creation and ba expansion within the framework of university – field organization partnerships, this way contributing to the social entrepreneurship field and suggesting how participants in ba creation and expansion may extend their roles in the knowledge creation process to achieve greater impact. The third article entitled “Scaling Social Impact: A Replication and Extension of SCALERS” contributes to the emerging scholarship on scaling of social impact by replicating initial results of the SCALERS model in an international context (i.e., Italy) and including some situational contingencies as moderating variables of the model.

Knowledge management (KM) has been determined by many researchers as one of the most important domains within the information systems (IS) field, and knowledge sharing (KS) has been identified as the most vital component of KM. Lack of KS within organizations has been approached from many perspectives. One perspective that has been outlined in recent studies is the organizational culture (OC) perspective, which examines the interaction between OC and KS behaviors. Although research has been conducted on OC and KS, the findings of recent studies have been contradictory. These conflicts were due to the different operationalization of KS. The purpose of this research was to conduct a multi method study to investigate the interaction between KS and OC in detail. A case study within a Fortune 50 organization was undertaken to address the problem. By focusing on socialization adopted from the socialization, externalization, combination, internalization (SECI) model, the iceberg theory, and the Competing Values Framework (CVF), two questions were explored to address an unexamined area within the body of knowledge. Per the recent calls for research, the questions addressed KS itemized into knowledge seeking and knowledge contributing, and investigated the phenomenon at multiple levels of the organization. The first question examined the interaction between OC and KS via socialization amongst peers for: (a) overall organization, (b) non-managers, (c) first level managers, and (d) second-level managers. The second question examined the interaction between OC and KS via socialization amongst various levels for: (a) subordinates and managers in overall organization, (b) non-managers and first level managers, and (c) first level managers and second level managers. Data were collected through 82 surveys, 23 interviews, 23 observations, and company records for the calendar year of 2017 to provide multiple types of data for triangulation. The quantitative data were analyzed through descriptive statistics, correlation tables, multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA), and visualization. The qualitative data were analyzed through open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. The combined results were triangulated to reach the conclusions. The MANCOVA displayed a significant interaction between OC and KS via socialization. Furthermore, the triangulated results showcased that perceived bureaucratic culture and perceived competitive- bureaucratic culture had a negative relationship with KS via socialization amongst peers, knowledge seeking for manager to subordinate, and subordinate to manager, but not for between level knowledge contributing. While perceived clan culture had a positive relationship with KS via socialization amongst peers, and for knowledge seeking from managers, but not for between level knowledge contributing. Perceived competitive culture was only discovered to have a negative relationship with knowledge seeking for level two managers, while having a positive relationship with knowledge contributing to employees, and knowledge contributing amongst peers with knowledge seeking as moderating variable. The various organizational levels also showcased distinct results which requires further investigation. Future research suggestions were made to extend the body of knowledge through various directions, alongside an IS solution recommendation for organizations to improve KS.