The antecedents to social impact in inter-organizational relationships – A systematic review and future research agenda

Abstract

Although the social impact of businesses is not a new topic, more attention should be paid to the social impact of inter-organizational relationships, both in academia and in practice. This systematic literature review synthesizes current scholarly research, focusing on facilitators and barriers as antecedents to the social impact of inter-organizational relationships. It thus responds to calls in the business-to-business literature for state-of-the-art reviews. From the macro, mezzo, and micro perspectives, we show links between different types of inter-organizational relationships and assign specific facilitators and barriers to three groups of countries by income level. We draw on our descriptive and thematic analysis of these antecedents to identify underexplored research themes for future studies in terms of theory, methodology, and context.