Turkey’s tourism social entrepreneurship ecosystem:|An assessment of the potential for hybrid value creation

Abstract

Turkey’s Tourism Social Entrepreneurship Ecosystem: An Assessment of the Potential for Hybrid Value Creation Tourism offers a potential to create positive social impacts toward reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and thus aligns well with the purpose of Social Entrepreneurship (SE). Yet, in Turkey, tourism SE fails in fulfilling its potential for contributing to SDGs. When aiming to reach SDGs, the ability of the SE practice to sustain itself becomes critical for long-term value creation for its stakeholders. Reaching this self-sustaining state requires an enabling context which provides for the needs of tourism SEs in order to become impact-focused enterprises. Conditions which enable value creation and self-sustainability of tourism social enterprises (TSEs) have not been thoroughly addressed in the literature, particularly in terms of their connections to social impact ecosystems. By focusing on hybrid value creation, this qualitative research explores the impediments faced by TSEs in Turkey to become self-sustainable impact-generating organizations. A preliminary analysis was conducted to identify the emerging themes and research gaps, and thus, the research focus. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with TSEs and intermediary organizations in the ecosystem. The findings showed that sustainable hybrid-value creation in tourism SE is affected by an intertwined set of factors acting in several layers and levels (i.e., the SE in tourism, the TSE; the social impact ecosystem; the tourism industry, and the overarching context). Based on the hybrid value creation characteristics of tourism SEs; their impact generation and growth patterns, areas of support failure in the ecosystem are identified, and elements of alternative support models are suggested.