Seeds of change: Unpacking the enduring effects of MNC knowledge transfer in autonomous social innovation projects by fringe stakeholders

This paper investigates the enduring effects of Corporate Social Innovation (CSI) initiatives by multinational companies (MNCs) in developing countries, emphasizing how knowledge transfer, absorption, and utilization by local fringe stakeholders foster Autonomous Social Innovation (ASI). Using an ethnographic case study of coffee farmers in the Dominican Republic, the study identifies key catalyzers—local NGO, cooperative and federation governance systems, local government, commercial institutions, and external technical actors—and enablers—awareness, cooperation, knowledge sharing, knowledge and partnership seeking—that allow ASI initiatives and the evolution of local ecosystems. Building on the literature of stakeholder engagement, stakeholder empowerment and knowledge-based view, the findings highlight how these elements collectively drive the shift from dependency-driven to self-reliant social innovation models, enabling fringe stakeholders to lead initiatives that integrate economic, social, and environmental value creation. Activities such as building training centers, developing their own branded coffee, and creating coffee tourism routes showcase the capacity of empowered stakeholders to drive impactful and scalable ASI. Our study advances the ASI literature by focusing on long-term sustainable impacts of social innovation through an egalitarian perspective of local empowered stakeholders, while previous studies largely focused on the immediate CSI impacts in a more paternalistic, MNC-based view. • This study reveals how knowledge transferred through CSI projects can be autonomously absorbed and utilized by fringe stakeholders. • The paper explains how stakeholder empowerment and knowledge dynamics foster Autonomous Social Innovation (ASI). • The paper offers empirically grounded implications for the design of CSI initiatives.