Stakeholder Governance Mechanisms In Open Social Innovation Ecosystems: A Complexity Perspective

Open Social Innovation Ecosystems (OSIEs) have emerged as crucial settings to address grand challenges, generating economic and social/environmental impact through stakeholders’ joint efforts. However, despite their undoubtful benefits, they entail a high level of complexity, given their nature of multi-sided and many-goal contexts, that increases their coordination costs and alignment needs. As such, they require the structuring of effective governance mechanisms to engender the anticipated impact. In light of this, our study revisits traditional governance mechanisms, building on the alliance management literature, and proposes an integrated taxonomy of governance mechanisms in multistakeholder initiatives. The paper also introduces a novel categorization of OSIEs based on stages of development, related activities, and involved stakeholders, as well as types and degrees of complexity. Combining these endeavors, we offer specific propositions for structuring effective governance mechanisms tailored to the complexities of OSIEs, contributing to the stakeholder governance literature and the Open Social Innovation debate. Overall, we aim to provide valuable insights for both theory and practice, with the ambitious goal of easing collaboration and enhancing societal impact generation in the increasingly widespread contexts of OSIEs’ initiatives.