A Critical Review of Organizations Driving Positive Social Change

This paper critically analyzes an article focusing on how market-based organizations can drive positive social change (PSC). The review explores the rationale behind examining organizations' relationships with society and their role in stimulating transformational processes for societal well-bei...Read More

Running Head: CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Critical Analysis
Name of the Student
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Author Note

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Article- Organizations Driving Positive Social Change: A Review and an Integrative
Framework of Change Processes
Rationale and Overview:
The rationale of choosing this article is to re-explore the topic of how the market based
organizations can drive the positive social change (PSC). It has been found that the importance
of this topic is growing rapidly and this particular paper demonstrates the way the organizations
are related to the society. The article integrates the research on certain projects which stimulates
the positive social change. The article further elaborates the positive social change as a
transformational process in order to advance the well-being of the society. The article of
Stephan et al(2016) fragments the essential concerns at every level of the article. The article is a
well document that clarifies the nature of PSC as a process and further develop an integrative
framework which specifies two different strategies of PSC. The study outlines the opportunities
for the future research and also draws a conceptual framework in order to differentiate between
the deep –level and surface level strategies. The findings of the study are reliable as it has a
concrete base for the integration and advancement of the knowledge on the corporate social
responsibility, social entrepreneurship and many others.
Critical evaluation of the arguments:
The existing literature regarding organizations driving positive social change suggests
that the societies are constantly facing growing challenges in certain areas such as education,
public health, social inequality and the environmental pollution. The market based organizations
play an important role while addressing such issues. There are few popular concepts related to
PSC such as “the shared value”, “inclusive growth”, “base of the pyramid” and others. Most of

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the established firms support the concept “do good and well” in order to alleviate the societal
challenges. The author of the article engages in both the inductive and abductive method for
reviewing systematically and integrating the evidence out of these existing literature and develop
a conceptual framework (Stephan et al. 2016). It is to be noted that the objective of the article is
to inspire a theoretical and empirical management research through taking the stock of the
mechanisms in the organizational practices. It stimulates the societal well-being. The author
derived the general change levers through abduction. It coded the change outcomes, the
measurement of the social change, the study quality, the sample size, the research design and
many others. The best part of the article is that it reviewed empirical evidence after linking the
actions of the organization with the PSC. The behavior change is external to the organization but
it is towards the greater well-being of the society. The systematic review procedure identified
118 sources followed by diverse databases for capturing the relevant evidences across the
academic disciplines.
The strengths and weaknesses of the article:
The article included the quantitative, qualitative and mixed –method researches along
with the primary research, the reviews, the unpublished and published research. In the online
supplement material, all of the 144 studies are included in the form of a data table. It is depicted
in the article that most of the research focused on the individuals rather than the change process
associated with the fields. As a contrast, this article evaluated the effects on the communities, the
industry, the regions, society, consumer groups and country at large. Hence, it is evident that the
article is based on the empirical researches which are completely relevant and reliable. The
language of the article is lucid and adheres to the principles of a research paper. It includes all
the necessary parts giving a clear outline of the data collection and the findings. These are the

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strengths for which the article can be preferred by many of the fellow researchers and other
scholars in this particular field.
However, the research questions are not that much clear. The research revealed the
processes and mechanisms underpinning between the PSC and organizations. The research is
founded on an extensive range of research design from the experimental and the ethnographic
studies. The research is limited to certain extent and leaves space for the future researches. The
future research can advance the understandings on how to structure and manage an open,
relational, embedded organization that is meaning –based too. The article is restricted from
delineating the appearance of the PSC projects associated with organizational design. A better
understanding of how the PSC unfolds itself through the passage of time in order to inform the
assessment of the PSC projects performance was required in the article. Overall, it is a useful
article and serves the purpose it intends to serve to the maximum.

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Reference
Stephan, U., Patterson, M., Kelly, C. and Mair, J., 2016. Organizations driving positive social
change: A review and an integrative framework of change processes. Journal of
Management, 42(5), pp.1250-1281.