Investing in the social innovation for sustainability: Identifying the casual effects in pharmaceutical distributors targeting informal settlement areas in Nairobi city, Kenya

This study reports empirical findings of a survey conducted among pharmaceutical distributors serving informal settlement areas in Nairobi city county. The pharmaceutical distributors face several challenges when serving these areas calling the management of the distributors to resort to social innovation as a viable strategy for business survival. The concern however is how sustainable such a strategy is to the survival of the business undertaken by the pharmaceutical distributors. The study was guided by the postulates of the Three Cycle and Tripple Bottom Line models to answer three objectives that sought to address how social innovation has been adopted, the level of sustainability attained as well as the effect of the level of social innovation on the level of sustainability attained. The study drew its population from 30 pharmaceutical distributors targeting informal settlement areas in Nairobi and obtained primary data from managers heading 7 key departments in each distributor. The study was responded to by 168 managers from 30 pharmaceuticals representing 80.4% response rate. Two components of social innovation, namely promoting social values and community empowerment were extracted through Exploratory Factor Analysis and were found to be practiced to a moderate extent (M=3.6; SD=1.36) and contributed to high level of sustainability (M=3.808; SD=1.025). A path analysis constructed using structural equation modelling indicated that the two components of social innovation have varying degrees of contribution to the three pillars of sustainability (planet, people & profit) with the highest being that on people (R2=4.03) and the least on profit(R2=3.46). Overall social innovation has a negative effect on sustainability (?=-0.13; p<0.05). The findings provide useful insights on the role of social innovation as a viable strategy for the sustainability of the pharmaceutical industry and makes suggestions on how it can be deployed to enhance sustainability in the pharmaceutical industry. The findings raise important implications on the relevance of the Three Cycle and Triple Bottom Line Models in explaining the role of social innovation in attaining the goal of sustainability in organizations.