From the profit of one toward benefitting many – Crafting a vision of shared value creation

In the world of interconnected business ecosystems, corporate social sustainability is not a single-firm endeavor. Instead of pure profit-making, companies should focus on shared value creation with the surrounding community. This study reveals that achieving shared value paradigm is complicated by actors’ relationships with their institutional, organizational, and socio-material environments. To break the status quo and shake the institutional field, actors need to form a strong shared vision and put it into action. In our qualitative in-depth case study in the health care sector, we investigate how a single company formed and implemented a vision of social sustainability leading to the health care campus development project. Based on our empirical findings, we formulate a theoretical framework delineating shared value creation through three active phases within three realms: (1) shaping the vision by forging the norms in the institutional realm, (2) sharing the vision through collaborative actions in the organizational realm, and (3) anchoring the vision by casting the foundations in the socio-material realm. The framework suggest that institutional change towards shared value creation requires a reformation of existing practices to meet new community based logic within the field. This requires radical actions and faces distinctive challenges in all three identified realms. The findings contribute to the growing body of literature linking the shared value creation with corporate social responsibility and institutional theory. We conclude by outlining managerial implications of the study and suggesting potential avenues for future research.