The Effects of Start-up Firms’ Alliances with Nonprofit Organizations on Competitive Advantage: A Perspective of Corporate Social Responsibility

An alliance with a nonprofit organization enables a start-up firm to achieve marketplace positional advantage and a superior performance. In spite of the importance of start-up firms’ alliance with nonprofit organizations, scholars have paid little explained how those alliance succeed. Building crucially on the resource-based theory of the firm, the competence-based theory of the firm, and resource-advantage theory of competition, we attempted to develop an integrative model explaining success in a start-up firm’ alliances with nonprofit organizations. We proposed that the three theories are linked by means of relationships among (1) start-up firms’ alliance competence, (2) nonprofit organizations’ complementary resources, and (3) corporate social responsibility program performance. In addition, we proposed that these factors influence success in start-up firms’ alliances with nonprofit organizations by achieving competitive advantage.