The Creation of Social Value within Markets: A Typology of Social Orders

This paper contributes to research on the deliberate creation of social value within markets. It furthers multi-level perspectives that explain such value creation considering the alignment of factors at the individual, organizational, and institutional levels of analysis. It argues for the incorporation of factors at the interactional level of analysis to account for differences generated by the intense interactional nature of markets. The paper refers to this interactional level as the ‘social order’ of markets and offers a typology of twelve social orders. Each order designates a specific alignment of the relational patterns that solve the three key interactional problems framing market exchanges (value, cooperation, and competition). Each one includes: one of two possible relational patterns resolving value problems - direct or indirect (depending on whether social value is created within the transaction that generates revenue to finance it or not); one of three patterns resolving cooperation problems- branding, voluntary standards, or regulation (depending on which of these three institutional structures is the dominant source of trust concerning claims of social value creation); and one of two resolving competition problems -- buyer- or supplier-driven (depending on whether bargaining power is tipped towards buyers or suppliers).