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From Balancing Missions to Mission Drift: The Role of the Institutional Context, Spaces, and Compartmentalization in the Scaling of Social Enterprises
Abstract
In this article, we explain the mechanisms that allow social enterprises to balance their missions, and the risk of mission drift as organizations grow. We empirically explore Incubator-BUS (I-BUS), a student organization within a private Brazilian university, which sought to incubate cooperatives for vulnerable groups. Although initially successful in balancing its missions, I-BUS then failed. We show how scaling-up can complicate the balancing of different missions within the same organization. We propose that, to balance their missions, social enterprises—especially recently formed and democratically managed enterprises—need not only “spaces of negotiation,” as suggested in the literature, but also “herding spaces” that connect an organization to its institutional context. We indicate why herding spaces are critical, but then show how scaling-up can result in organizational “compartmentalization” that undermines them.
... Second, SEs economically sustain their missions through the commercialization of products or services in the market, such that SE are intrinsically entrepreneurial organizations that do not depend on subsidies or donations as a primary source of income. Third, economic benefits are channeled to prioritize the maximization of social value over shareholder profits (Agafonow, 2014;Bacq & Eddleston, 2018;Ometto et al., 2019;Reficco et al., 2021;Tasavori et al., 2018;Tykkyläinen, 2019;Wang & Zhou, 2020). ...
... where tensions may arise, potentially resulting in mission drift (Ometto et al., 2019;Siebold et al., 2019). This drift occurs when an organization places excessive emphasis on one aspect of its mission, such as prioritizing profit motives over the social mission or vice versa, which in turn puts the intended social innovation at risk. ...
... Moreover, several studies questioned the "positive" effects of growth on firm survival, highlighting financial, operational, and legitimacy risks (Tykkyläinen, 2019;Zhao & Han, 2020), added to the increasing bureaucratization and identity loss risks faced by SEs as they grow (Ometto et al., 2019). ...
Purpose
This study aims to expand the concept of business growth by incorporating sustainability demands, particularly in the context of the Anthropocene era. It explores the growth trajectories of social enterprises (SEs) and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), examining how SEs integrate social and environmental objectives into their growth process. Through a systematic literature review (SLR), this study compares these approaches with traditional SME growth paradigms, highlighting the need for a holistic understanding of business growth that addresses contemporary socioenvironmental challenges.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative SLR was conducted, using a structured search algorithm to identify and evaluate research on growth and scaling in SMEs and SEs. The search of the Web of Science database with specific growth-related keywords yielded 5,362 articles, which were narrowed to 194 after filtering by journal relevance. Content analysis, guided by an inductively developed codebook, examined growth definitions, operationalizations, and methodologies. This paper focused on key growth dimensions (economic, social and environmental) and identified whether growth was addressed as an outcome or process, along with its enablers and barriers.
Findings
While there are areas of intersection between the literatures, the findings reveal that traditional SME growth frameworks do not entirely align with SEs growth conception and management. Furthermore, SE’s growth barriers and facilitators, as well as growth trajectories more broadly, emerge as distinct from those of traditional SMEs. The results distill insights from SE growth paths that can be valuable for traditional SME managers, particularly in terms of managing stakeholders and the institutional environment. Social entrepreneurs commonly use strategies for reshaping business norms, influencing consumer culture and raising social issues awareness, leveraging the values of stakeholders to secure essential support.
Originality/value
As SMEs confront escalating pressure to align with the sustainable development agenda, the findings underscore the critical significance of drawing insights from the burgeoning SE growth literature. This suggests that traditional SME growth literature stands to gain invaluable insights from recent SE research, fostering a more nuanced comprehension of sustainability-centric SME growth trajectories.
... Persistent inequality in health care access constitutes a major, complex grand challenge (Park et al., 2022;Vakili & McGahan, 2016) that requires innovative organizational forms and scalable solutions (Dorado et al., 2022;Ometto et al., 2019). Intermediated social franchises offer one pathway for extending access to health care, but there is scant evidence on how these organizations reconcile their diverse goals, which include creating impact to franchisees (nurses) and downstream beneficiaries (patients in rural communities). ...
... The costs of intermediation, however, are mostly borne by the franchisees (nurses), who must abide by complex and restrictive operational standards. Our grounded model reveals that intermediation problems can be detrimental for the propagation of social impact as they introduce conflict between the franchisor and the franchisees, potentially leading to instability and mission drift (André & Pache, 2016;Ometto et al., 2019). Such problems can ultimately undermine the network's goal of providing quality health care to a broad beneficiary base, such as patients from rural disadvantaged communities. ...
... We contribute to the emerging literature on social franchising by documenting the challenges of creating social impact in what we called intermediated social franchises. Existent literature has highlighted the nature of agency problems in social franchises (Kistruck et al., 2011;Tracey & Jarvis, 2007), which compounds the problems of identity conflict and mission drift that beset social enterprises in general (Battilana & Lee, 2014;Ciambotti et al., 2023;Ometto et al., 2019;Ramus & Vaccaro, 2017). The literature points to the role of governance mechanisms for improving the ability of social franchises to achieve scale (Giudici et al., 2020) and navigate trade-offs between social and commercial goals (Ometto et al., 2019;Smith & Besharov, 2019). ...
This study investigates how social franchises extend health care in rural areas, thus addressing vast and persistent disparities in health care access. We conducted an inductive study of Unjani, a South African organization that extended primary health services to disadvantaged rural communities through a network of 135 health clinics. Our analysis focused on the process of impact intermediation—the propagation of impact across multiple layers of the franchise network, including franchisees and downstream beneficiaries. To facilitate impact intermediation, the franchisor harmonized the mission of the franchisees with its own mission and integrated community impact among franchisees. Such coordination and monitoring activity exposed franchisees to intermediation problems in the form of mission conflict and impact divergence. Our analysis reveals how Unjani nurtured network stewardship that afforded the franchisee nurses with greater support, autonomy, and ownership, thus overcoming intermediation problems in their pursuit of shared communal responsibilities to extend health care to rural communities.
... Hybrid organisations have been found to often experience tensions in sustaining the joint pursuit of their plural goals over time, potentially leading them to undergo a process of mission drift characterised by losing sight of their original purposes and the dilution of their raison d'être (Ometto et al., 2019). Given the threats posed by mission drift to the organisation's long-term sustainability and survival, research into how hybrid organisations deal with mission drift has attracted notable interest in the business and society literature. ...
... Although the notion of mission drift has also been used to describe ways in which an organisation purposefully drifts towards addressing a wider range of concerns (e.g., Grimes et al., 2019), this concept has been generally mobilised to capture the difficulties that hybrid organisations face in maintaining a sustainable balance between their multiple missions in the long run (Jay, 2013;Pache & Santos, 2013;Ashforth & Reingen, 2014;Smith & Besharov, 2019;Battilana et al., 2022). Accordingly, in this article, we draw on a notion of mission drift as the unbalanced emphasis on one mission at the expense of the other or others (Ramus & Vaccaro, 2017;Ometto et al., 2019;Klein et al., 2021). ...
... Among the various catalysts of mission drift, growth is often highlighted as a prominent one (Wolf & Mair, 2019;Ometto et al., 2019;Bauwens et al., 2020). It is argued that growth can lead hybrid organisations to overly focus on business concerns, such as resource mobilisation and performance evaluation, whilst neglecting the alternative purposes that constitute their pluralistic nature (Doherty et al., 2014;André & Pache, 2016). ...
Understanding how hybrid organizations resist mission drift and sustain the joint pursuit of their plural goals over time remains a central theoretical and practical concern in the business and society literature. In this article, we mobilize an organizational politics approach to elucidate how hybrid organizations react to mission drift and strive to rebalance the relationship between their conflicting missions. Drawing on an in-depth longitudinal analysis of a project developed within a multinational worker co-op to reverse mission drift, we elaborate a process model showing how shifting patterns in the mobilization of episodic and systemic forms of power provoke critical changes in the way that plural missions are construed and enacted within hybrid organizations. This study also contributes to the field of co-operative organization and management studies by revealing that the transfer of organizational practices within multinational co-ops is more critically shaped by power relations and conflicting interests rather than, as much of the previous literature has argued, by host country institutions.
... For instance, vehicles for stakeholder engagement improve reciprocal understanding of stakeholders and their differing value requirements (Battilana et al., 2015;Polletta, 1999Polletta, , 2014. Even real-life interactions, where people meet physically to establish social relations, help to construct common objectives (Haug, 2013): by getting together and discussing, stakeholders develop increased awareness of their interdependence in the process of joint-value creation (Ometto et al., 2019). Stakeholder engagement practices also allow exchanges of information on the utility functions of different stakeholders, enabling managers to better map their value requirements (Harrison et al., 2010), and facilitating their inclusion (Ometto et al., 2019). ...
... Even real-life interactions, where people meet physically to establish social relations, help to construct common objectives (Haug, 2013): by getting together and discussing, stakeholders develop increased awareness of their interdependence in the process of joint-value creation (Ometto et al., 2019). Stakeholder engagement practices also allow exchanges of information on the utility functions of different stakeholders, enabling managers to better map their value requirements (Harrison et al., 2010), and facilitating their inclusion (Ometto et al., 2019). In their most advanced form, stakeholder engagement practices may act as facilitators of inclusion, because they embed the enterprise in a culture of conferences, overarching projects, and other initiatives that help supervise its direction and prevent the practices from degenerating (Ometto et al., 2019(Ometto et al., , p. 1035. ...
... Stakeholder engagement practices also allow exchanges of information on the utility functions of different stakeholders, enabling managers to better map their value requirements (Harrison et al., 2010), and facilitating their inclusion (Ometto et al., 2019). In their most advanced form, stakeholder engagement practices may act as facilitators of inclusion, because they embed the enterprise in a culture of conferences, overarching projects, and other initiatives that help supervise its direction and prevent the practices from degenerating (Ometto et al., 2019(Ometto et al., , p. 1035. Such efforts may go far and deep, and may strengthen competitive advantage and organizational sustainability in the long run (Rodriguez-Melo & Mansouri, 2011). ...
To shield stakeholders from exploitation, society increasingly expects organizations to engage with stakeholders. While exploitation of stakeholders is of great concern, economic literature points to the costly nature of stakeholder engagement vis-à-vis alternative mechanisms that protect stakeholders, such as competitive markets. When the costs of stakeholder engagement outweigh the benefits, why would organizations engage with stakeholders? Through an analysis of the cooperative enterprise and a comparison with its capitalist counterpart, we theorize two additional reasons why stakeholder engagement is beneficial. First, we explain how stakeholder engagement facilitates long-term organizational resilience and protection of stakeholders in times of crisis, and second, we show how engagement is a decisive ingredient in answering non-economic value requirements of stakeholders. To conclude, we contribute to the broader stakeholder engagement and cooperative literature by stressing that engagement practices, and particularly democratic governance arrangements, are subject to design principles that sometimes favor stakeholders in capitalist firms.
... Our article contributes in two ways to the current scholarly conversation about the place-based dynamics of organization (Shrivastava and Kennelly, 2013;Guthey et al., 2014), especially the organization of innovation ecosystems (Ritala et al., 2013) and CSPs (Ometto et al., 2019). First, we build a bridge between innovation ecosystems and the places in which they are embedded. ...
... Multistakeholder partnerships represent a potential space for discussing place-related issues and collectively developing a placemaking agenda. Ometto et al. (2019) refer to such spaces as herding spaces, which is the concept on which we build in this article. Herding spaces are arenas where actors from different organizations get together to address a common purpose and connect with the institutional context (Ometto et al., 2019). ...
... Ometto et al. (2019) refer to such spaces as herding spaces, which is the concept on which we build in this article. Herding spaces are arenas where actors from different organizations get together to address a common purpose and connect with the institutional context (Ometto et al., 2019). Herding spaces allow for negotiating issues between different societal stakeholders (Ometto et al., 2019), which can also lead to the development of sustainable innovation ecosystems (Rajala et al., 2018;Parida et al., 2019) and contribute to place regeneration (McDonald et al., 2010;van Hille et al., 2019). ...
The dynamics between places and innovation ecosystems and the role that cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) can play in regenerating places and in revitalizing innovation ecosystems remain poorly theorized. In this study we use two cases-Humber (UK) and Southwest Finland-to develop a conceptual model that demonstrates the vicious and virtuous dynamics between places and innovation ecosystems. We show that CSPs can act as herding spaces-arenas where actors from different organizations get together to address a common purpose and connect with the institutional context-and alter these vicious and virtuous dynamics. Specifically, our findings shed light on four mechanisms that enable CSPs to act as herding spaces and so to help break away from the vicious (vitalizing role) and reinforce the virtuous (nurturing role) dynamics between places and innovation ecosystems: recognition of place-based challenges, improvement or utilization of place attachment, development of purpose ecosystems, and direct engagement in place regeneration activities.
... Scaling up an organization to serve all potential stakeholders is difficult, risky, and possibly fatal to venture survival (Coad et al., 2013). Scaling up a social enterprise is especially challenging, as these innovative hybrid organizations-combining a social mission with a self-funding mandate-are complex to grow (Ometto et al., 2019). ...
... Failure to scale up is common, and organizational failure to survive during scaling up is not uncommon (e.g., Astebro et al., 2014;Shankar & Clausen, 2020). The hybridity of social enterprises adds further challenge when scaling up, and the socalled "mission drift" is likely during this period (Ometto et al., 2019). Scaling the social impact model carries with it a requirement to scale the commercial business model (the method of creating, delivering, and capturing value to fund the social impact model, e.g., Dao & Martin, 2017), further complicating the scaling process. ...
... These insights also contribute to discussions around the ethical implications of scaling up social enterprise by authors such as André and Pache (2016) and Ometto et al. (2019). In our case, social entrepreneurs were able to maintain a strong focus on their social mission by embedding their social impact and commercial models in one unified vision, in which the commercial plays a supporting role to the social: a shared vision of DAO as an organization that used the business case for creating an inclusive world for persons with disabilities. ...
How does a social enterprise pursue its ethical mandate of social impact growth while navigating the perils of the most vulnerable stage in a venture’s life—scaling up? We observe a small inclusivity social enterprise attempting to scale up rapidly to create equality for people with disabilities throughout the world. Our embedded, ethnographic study is terminated with the venture’s unfortunate demise after their dramatic effort to scale up failed. By examining scaling decision-making and conflicts around creation reasoning longitudinally, our study identifies over-use of effectual logic—a creation reasoning type considered more ethical and more appropriate for high-innovativeness contexts than causal logic—as a major factor in the venture’s failure. From this insight, we extend the parameters of effectuation theory to scaling up and dimensionalize its ethical implications. Guidance for social entrepreneurs to scale up successfully while maintaining ethical integrity is also provided.
... This would be possible by investigating the case of DHOs, thus focusing on scaling social impact in a clear distinction from the financial mission. Moreover, this research gap echoes a growing need to investigate hybridity and dual mission in DHOs by elucidating mechanisms for successfully combining divergent missions, goals and processes by navigating paradoxical tensions (Battilana and Lee, 2014;Battilana et al., 2015;Ometto et al., 2019), usually applying a paradox theory lens (Smith et al., 2013;Smith and Besharov, 2019). Currently, scaling social impact toward beneficiaries remains overlooked, with the neglect of processes and outcomes IJEBR 29,11 of scaling concerning the dual mission of DHOs (Glaveli and Geormas, 2018;Shepherd and Patzelt, 2022). ...
... In particular, if the dual mission has been differentiated in DHOs, the cross-bracing actions to address dual mission tensions reinforce one another, thereby showing the synergic nature of such paradoxical actions-a proper integration approach (Lewis and Smith, 2022). In this way, the study enables to move theories of hybridity and paradoxes in SEs toward a dynamic perspective (Hahn and Knight, 2021), instead of relying on statical mechanisms to combine dual missions (Battilana et al., 2015;Kannothra et al., 2018;Ometto et al., 2019). ...
... However, despite the many existing studies on scaling in SE, the literature has yet to agree on the definition and processes needed to scale this dual mission (Islam, 2020;Shepherd and Patzelt, 2022;Chatterjee et al., 2022). Some authors have related scaling in SEs to providing organizational growth with a greater number of customers (Bocken et al., 2016;Ometto et al., 2019) while providing a larger impact on communities and societies (Andr e and Pache, 2016;Gordon et al., 2018;Kannothra et al., 2018). Other scholars have emphasized the diffusion or replication of a product, service, or organizational model in multiple geographic locations and contexts to maximize the number of people reached by a related social innovation (Andr e and Pache, 2016;Gordon et al., 2018;Busch and Barkema, 2021). ...
Purpose
Social enterprises (SEs) face tensions when combining financial and social missions, and this is particularly evident in the scaling process. Although extant research mainly focuses on SEs that integrate their social and financial missions, this study aims to unpack social impact scaling strategies in differentiated hybrid organizations (DHOs) through the case of African SEs.
Design/methodology/approach
The study entails an inductive multiple case study approach based on four case SEs: work integration social enterprises (WISEs) and fair trade producer social enterprises (FTPSEs) in Uganda and Kenya. A total of 24 semi-structured interviews were collected together with multiple secondary data sources and then coded and analyzed through the rigorous Gioia et al . (2013) methodology to build a theoretical model.
Findings
The results indicate that SEs, as differentiated hybrids, implement four types of social impact scaling strategies toward beneficiaries and benefits (penetration, bundling, spreading and diversification) and unveil different dual mission tensions generated by each scaling strategy. The study also shows mutually reinforcing mechanisms named cross-bracing actions, which are paradoxical actions connected to one another for navigating tensions and ensuring dual mission during scaling.
Research limitations/implications
This study provides evidence of four strategies for scaling social impact, with associated challenges and response mechanisms based on the cross-bracing effect between social and financial missions. Thus, the research provides a clear framework (social impact scaling matrix) for investigating differentiation in hybridity at scaling and provides new directions on how SEs scale their impact, with implications for social entrepreneurship and dual mission management literature.
Practical implications
The model offers a practical tool for decision-makers in SEs, such as managers and social entrepreneurs, providing insights into what scaling pathways to implement (one or multiples) and, more importantly, the implications and possible solutions. Response mechanisms are also useful for tackling specific tensions, thereby contributing to addressing the challenges of vulnerable, marginalized and low-income individuals. The study also offers implications for policymakers, governments and other ecosystem actors such as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and social investors.
Originality/value
Despite the growing body of literature on scaling social impact, only a few studies have focused on differentiated hybrids, and no evidence has been provided on how they scale only the social impact (without considering commercial scaling). This study brings a new perspective to paradox theory and hybridity, showing paradoxes come into view at scaling, and documenting how from a differentiation approach to hybridity, DHOs also implemented cross-bracing actions, which are reinforcement mechanisms, thus suggesting connections and synergies among the actions in social and financial mission, where such knowledge is required to better comprehend how SEs can achieve a virtuous cycle of profits and reinvestments in social impact.
... Even though scaling up is an imperative for social enterprises to magnify their positive impact on society (Cornelissen et al. 2021), few have succeeded in scaling up their operations in practice (Deiglmeier and Greco 2008;Ometto et al. 2019;Sharma and Jaiswal 2018). To date, we lack a process-oriented perspective on the tensions involved in scaling-up processes of social enterprises (Davies, Haugh, and Chambers 2019) which may inhibit the growth of organisations constantly facing trade-offs between social and entrepreneurial goals (Costanzo et al. 2014). ...
... Our study contributes to the debate on mission drift and how social enterprises can sustain their hybridity over time (Ometto et al. 2019; and prevent mission drift (Grimes, Williams, and Zhao 2020). ...
... Our findings contribute to the debate on how social enterprises can sustain their hybridity over time and avoid mission drift (Battilana and Dorado 2010;Canales 2014;Haigh and Hoffman 2012;Ometto et al. 2019;Pache and Santos 2013;. Our study answers the call by Wry and Zhao (2018) for more research on the conditions that prevent or enhance the risk for mission drift. ...
The scaling up of a social enterprise is a dynamic process that often involves tensions resulting from the divergent social and business logics inherently present in social enterprises. We analysed extensive data covering a period of more than 10 years’ journey of an affordable housing finance organisation in India. We identify four phases of the scaling up process of the venture and highlight three areas where the social-business tensions arise in: (i) human resources, (ii) organising and (iii) investor expectations. Our process model illustrates how the organisation developed different responses to mitigate these tensions in different phases and avoid mission drift. These responses include prioritising the social side, half-hearted balancing, accepting growth limitation and anticipating social-business tensions.
... Institutional logic, including the norms, values, and beliefs, can significantly shape decision-making (Nigam & Ocasio, 2010;Thornton et al., 2012), particularly aspects of institutional complexity when there are multiple, often conflicting institutional logics (Thornton, 2002). When decision-makers strive to accommodate these complexities, they may experience a "mission drift," where they fail to effectively focus on the original social missions (Ebrahim et al., 2014;Ometto et al., 2019). This is often evident in regeneration, where the economic performance goals can clash with social and environmental ones, especially in schemes that strongly rely on market-based approaches (Russell & Redmond, 2009;Victory & Malpass, 2011). ...
... Long-standing challenges in regeneration include mixed health and sustainability outcomes (Crawford et al., 2014;Power, 2008;Thomson et al., 2009), local tensions (Slawinski et al., 2021), and risks of gentrification and displacement (Arthurson et al., 2015;McCartney et al., 2017). These challenges exemplify risks of mission drift, where organizations with complex institutions shift away from their original social missions (Ebrahim et al., 2014;Ometto et al., 2019). For hybrid organizations such as HAs, decision-makers face competing but interconnected demands (Pache et al., 2024). ...
In urban regeneration projects, balancing environmental, social, and economic aspects is crucial but challenging, often leading to mission drift when team focus deviates from the original goals. Through a case study of regeneration projects at a large U.K. housing association, we explore decision makers’ attention to sustainability, health, and well-being as core elements of social mission. We combined qualitative analysis with an examination of structural complexities and system behaviors, adopting a systems thinking perspective. Analysis of attention patterns in regeneration meetings reveals that attention to the social missions was not sustained, with evident attention shifts toward financial costs and risks. Also, sustainability is prioritized less than health and well-being topics. We use a causal loop diagram to describe the underlying mechanisms that drive attention dynamics, highlighting how the structural complexities can undermine sustainable development in regeneration. Finally, we propose strategies to sustain attention toward sustainability, health, and well-being in regeneration.
... This facilitated the company's harmonization of stability and change by establishing consistent physical environments where actors from varied institutional backgrounds collaboratively addressed long-term changes. Consistent with studies emphasizing the significance of "spaces" in tackling grand challenges (Chatterjee et al., 2023;Ometto et al., 2019;Ungureanu et al., 2021), our research indicates that partnership portfolios can be instrumental arenas for navigating diverse stakeholder demands, promoting sustainable transitions (Dzhengiz & Patala, 2023;Ometto et al., 2019). Moreover, the PPS showcases paradoxical actions across diverse spatial scales. ...
... This facilitated the company's harmonization of stability and change by establishing consistent physical environments where actors from varied institutional backgrounds collaboratively addressed long-term changes. Consistent with studies emphasizing the significance of "spaces" in tackling grand challenges (Chatterjee et al., 2023;Ometto et al., 2019;Ungureanu et al., 2021), our research indicates that partnership portfolios can be instrumental arenas for navigating diverse stakeholder demands, promoting sustainable transitions (Dzhengiz & Patala, 2023;Ometto et al., 2019). Moreover, the PPS showcases paradoxical actions across diverse spatial scales. ...
This article investigates how firms address the stability-change paradox inherent in sustainability transitions through the maintenance and utilization of a portfolio of sustainability-oriented partnerships. Drawing on a retrospective case study of Dong/Ørsted, a Danish energy company, we demonstrate the varying manifestations of the stability-change paradox during different phases of the company’s transition, influenced by both exogenous and endogenous factors. Furthermore, our findings reveal how Dong/Ørsted employed their partnership portfolio to implement diverse responses to manage the paradox. Based on these findings, we argue that partnership portfolios can serve as spatiotemporal pockets, enabling organizations to effectively address and leverage the temporal and spatial aspects inherent in sustainability paradoxes. In addition, we highlight how partnership portfolios facilitate sustainability transitions by creating and leveraging different forms of collaborative value.
... Innovative CE solutions can also help to leverage the limited policy and public visibility of the SSE (Ridley-Duff & Bull, 2021). Furthermore, the CE system thinking approach can help SSE organisations to look for a more ambitious and cross-scale approach to social and environmental problems (Defourny & Nyssens, 2017), addressing issues with scaling-up that have been often identified by the SSE literature (Battilana, 2018;Defourny & Nyssens, 2013;Ometto et al., 2019). Second, SSCE organisations have explicit social and environmental justice objectives, including better labour practices and working conditions, lower economic power asymmetries and economic constraints, and greater equality and inclusion (solidarity principle). ...
... When the number of employees increased and the organisational structure became more complex, in order to respond to the reduced internal coherence due to the challenge of 'scaling up' (Battilana, 2018;Ometto et al., 2019), CAUTO adopted a more systematic and advanced 'participatory architecture' (Interview 9). Similarly, to other hybrid organisations (Bull & Ridley-Duff, 2019b;Ramus & Vaccaro, 2017), the new structure served to balance the need for a more formalised structure, as well as internal dynamism and individual commitment. ...
The conventional view tends to consider the social dimension of the circular economy as conspicuous by its absence. This paper draws attention to business strategies and organisational practices that bring together the valorisation of wasted material resources and marginalised people. Theoretically, we build on the literature on hybrid forms of organisation and management typical of the social and solidarity economy (SSE)—for example, social cooperatives—to introduce a more realistic and dynamic model of social and solidarity circular economy (SSCE). Offering a definition of SSCE based on existing hybrid organisational practices rather than abstract ideals, we juxtapose the SSCE and the current corporate‐led CE approach across three key dimensions: strategic aims; organisational boundaries and governance mechanisms. To illustrate how this SSCE works, we focus on the case of CAUTO, an Italian network of circular social cooperatives based in Northern Italy. We identify three intertwined steps through which CAUTO developed an effective SSCE strategy: social circular innovation, networked actions and participatory scaling up. Taken together, our findings suggest a realistic pathway to business circularity that is inclusive, pragmatic and embedded in social practices.
... Because organizational mission is made explicit and communicated to audiences, typically through a mission statement, it also 'establish[es] audiences' expectations regarding what types of actions are appropriate […] to undertake' (Grimes et al., 2019, p. 820). When organizational mission and subsequent actions are perceived to be inconsistent, such discontinuity is labelled 'mission drift' -a process that has been observed in social enterprises when they deviate from their founding social mission to pursue commercial strategies (Battilana and Lee, 2014;Ometto et al., 2019) and more recently extended to describe discontinuity between founding mission and subsequent actions in any type of organization (Grimes et al., 2019). ...
... Finally, our findings extend our understanding of mission work and mission drift in two important ways. First, while prior research has adopted an organization-level focus (Battilana and Lee, 2014;Davies and Doherty, 2019;Ometto et al., 2019), we extend mission work to the market level. We emphasize how mission work helps a market mediator to coordinate legitimation efforts on behalf of market participants with different views on how the founding mission should evolve (Balsiger, 2021;Munir et al., 2021). ...
How can market growth be legitimized in moral markets when such growth challenges the market’s founding mission? We shed new light on this question in a study of how Fairtrade International (FTI), the ‘market mediator’ regulating the fair trade moral market, gradually adapted the certification standards articulated at founding to facilitate market participation by multinational corporations (MNCs). Despite critiques by pioneer organizations after each growth-oriented mission change, we find that FTI managed to retain the support of these organizations and thereby sustain market-level moral legitimation. We theorize three types of ‘mission work’ through which moral market mediators can balance market growth and moral legitimation. First, mission editing trims and flexes the market’s moral mission to be more compatible with market growth. Second, mission moralizing articulates diverse moral claims to legitimize mission editing and frame market growth as necessary for mission accomplishment. Third, mission stabilizing enables to reach a temporary truce with pioneer organizations by emphasizing mission continuity and building a feeling of common fate. By illuminating mission work as a moral legitimation capability deployed by moral market mediators, our findings contribute to the literatures on moral markets, moral legitimation, and mission work.
... This raises an additional ontological problem for the effort: by the time such an ecosystem is developed its nodes may have already lost their innovative momentum. Additionally, in the process of scaling up, new organisational concerns and challenges arise, which often lead to a shift in the mission of social enterprises, i.e. what is generally defined as the challenge of 'scaling up' (Ometto et al. 2019). In this context, 'spaces of negotiation' (Battilana et al. 2015) and 'herding spaces'spaces that connect social enterprises to institutional environments (Ometto et al. 2019)are valuable means that can achieve a long-term balance and avoid mission drift. ...
... Additionally, in the process of scaling up, new organisational concerns and challenges arise, which often lead to a shift in the mission of social enterprises, i.e. what is generally defined as the challenge of 'scaling up' (Ometto et al. 2019). In this context, 'spaces of negotiation' (Battilana et al. 2015) and 'herding spaces'spaces that connect social enterprises to institutional environments (Ometto et al. 2019)are valuable means that can achieve a long-term balance and avoid mission drift. Although these issues are outside the scope of the current limited research, they do suggest future research that needs to be done. ...
This article explores the support structures for social innovation from a network perspective, applying a qualitative enriched Social Network Analysis (SNA) to investigate them. The analysis draws on a survey distributed among three hundred and twenty-one (321) social innovation organisation in Ireland, of which sixty-two (62) valid responses were included in the analysis. This is complemented with sixteen (16) semi-structured interviews with key informants. The current findings identified the strong bridging capacity of the Irish public sector in supporting social innovation, specifically in the start-up phase of social innovative initiatives. At the same time, the findings signal a mismatch between the hybrid nature of social innovation and the unilateral approach of public institutions. It points to the need for blended and cross-sectoral supports in order to scale-up and enable more diverse pathways for systemic change.
... Second, and related, we expand the understanding of mission neglect in social entrepreneurship and uncover the potential role of individuals' subjective experiences of impactfulness. While research so far has prioritized mission drift as a dominant form of mission neglect (Ometto et al., 2019;Ramus & Vacarro, 2017), we propose that social enterprises can also face mission creep as the accumulation of new goals, tasks, and programs expanding beyond the original organizational mission (Haugh & Kitson, 2007;Jonker & Meehan, 2008) that stretches the organization too thin to meet goals related to the original mission. ...
... Individuals' subjective experience of impactful work can help social enterprises to address mission neglect proactively, instead of retroactively. Research so far has examined mission neglect after it happens (Ometto et al., 2019). Yet our findings show that challenges to individuals' subjective experiences of impactful work in social enterprises can stem from fears of potential mission neglect that individuals are aware of. ...
Individuals start and join social enterprises to catalyze social impact but may not subjectively experience their work as impactful. In this article, we inductively uncover when social enterprise members question the impactfulness of their work and how they engage in sensemaking to experience their work as impactful. Exploring the experiences of members across two social enterprises with different missions, we provide insights into instances creating ambiguity of or discrepancies in impactfulness and unearth how individuals navigate these in different circumstances with two distinct sensemaking practices: internalizing and compensating. We reveal the efforts required to experience work as impactful, highlight the heterogeneity and agency in maintaining this perception, and suggest a potential dark side for members and missions of social enterprises.
... As social enterprises 'pursue a social mission while engaging in commercial activities that sustain their operations' (Battilana & Lee, 2014, p. 399), they are 2005. From an investment perspective, however, social enterprises are often perceived as having unfavourable risk and return characteristics, as they are not (primarily) guided by the aim of maximizing financial returns (Austin et al., 2006;Ometto et al., 2019;Yunus et al., 2010). At the same time, such businesses usually fall outside the scope of funding schemes for typical non-profit organisations because of their commercial activities (Lehner & Nicholls, 2014;Moore et al., 2012). ...
... Second, the hybrid mission of social enterprises rarely allows them to charge market prices for their products and services. This leads to difficulties in accessing regular financial markets because mainstream financial stakeholders usually emphasize the economic potential of the organisations they back (Austin et al., 2006;Ometto et al., 2019;Yunus et al., 2010). Third, social enterprises that operate in developing economies face environments in which quality resources are scarce or expensive (Zahra et al., 2008), or where institutional financing mechanisms are absent or weak (Kistruck et al., 2011). ...
Social enterprises, located between non‐profit organisations and for‐profit firms, often struggle to acquire external funding. An increasing amount of research on the external financing of social enterprises stems from a fragmented body of the literature anchored in a variety of subject areas (e.g. entrepreneurship, public sector management, general management and strategy). We systematically review 204 academic articles published between 1998 and 2021 to bridge the knowledge gaps in these subject areas by: (1) mapping the field of the external financing of social enterprises at the individual, organisational and institutional levels; (2) synthesising the findings to develop an overarching framework; and (3) discussing theoretically sound future research avenues. We find that research at the individual level focuses primarily on investors’ perspective of the ideal characteristics of a social entrepreneur. Research at the organisational level often addresses the dual logics of social enterprises and their impact on the successful financing of these businesses and the role of investor–investee collaboration. Research at the institutional level can be clustered into cultural, economic, political and legal factors. Overall, we stress the need for research that adopts an overarching view by considering all three levels of analysis simultaneously and using organisational and economic theories.
... Because social enterprises aim to address societal problems by engaging in market behavior, much research explores how social and commercial logic are combined within social enterprises (Gillett et al., 2019;Mair et al., 2015). Different strategies are adopted by social entrepreneurs to incorporate conflicting logics, such as setting up appropriate governance structures and practices (Bruneel et al., 2020;Mair et al., 2015), undertaking negotiation (Ometto et al., 2019), deploying digital innovation , and making commitments to their social mission (Valsecchi et al., 2019). Fitzgerald and Shepherd (2018) offered a typology that shows integration, aggregation, compartmentalization, and subordination as avenues for incorporating commercial logic into social enterprises. ...
Over the past decade, institutional theory has been extensively utilized in the field of social entrepreneurship (SE). However, an encompassing overview of the wide-ranging applications of institutional theory to SE is lacking, potentially hampering academic advances in this domain. To fill this gap, we conduct a systematic review and supplementary bibliometric analysis of 148 papers published between 2008 and 2022 to comprehensively understand the nexus of SE and institutional theory while also outlining the integration of ethics herein. Our analysis shows that the existing research is divided into three clusters, reflecting three unique conversations between SE and institutional theory: institutional and societal change through SE, institutional complexity and hybrid organizations, and the institutional context of SE. We find that ethics is only integrated into these conversations to a limited degree. Based on our analysis, we zoom in on each conversation to identify the existing research gaps and point to new opportunities for future research. We also encourage SE scholars to zoom out on the abovementioned conversations to enrich this promising field by critically examining ethics and incorporating relevant insights from other research fields (i.e., social movement theory, category, and emotions).
... This paper also provokes a discussion around the "silent resistance" (Edman & Arora-Jonsson, 2022) of social enterprises rather than lobbying or confrontation (Agarwal et al., 2018;Bloom & Smith, 2010;Mair et al., 2012) in the context of predatory state logics that might be threatening for firms' survival (Bhatt et al., 2019). The current research also proliferates and enriches the discourse around multiple institutional logics in hybrid organizations (Battilana et al., 2015;Skelcher & Smith, 2015;Besharov & Smith, 2013;Jay, 2013), and provides an original contribution by depicting mechanisms for combating mission drift toward state logic rather than market logic that is widely covered in the literature (c.f., Cornforth, 2014;Doherty et al., 2014;Ometto et al., 2019). State logics are highly relevant to social entrepreneurial organizations as they collaborate with governments as part of their mandate for change (Agarwal et al., 2018;Seelos & Mair, 2018) and due to the relevance of their social mission to public policies (Laville et al., 2007). ...
Social entrepreneurial organizations have been defined as those innovative organizations that create social change through engaging in a process of institutional entrepreneurship, and hence change institutional logics. However, this paper argues that emerging markets are characterized by distinct state logics that affect social enterprises’ strategies. On the one hand, in the face of legal logics, incumbent social entrepreneurial organizations go into a process of conformity, compromise, and bargaining through mechanisms of replacement, blending, and assimilation of state logics. On the other hand, in the context of state informal compulsory power, incumbent social entrepreneurial organizations implement the decoupling mechanism, in addition to series of blending and assimilation mechanisms. This research contributes to our understanding of the mechanisms by which the state forces change to the institutional logics of social entrepreneurial organizations, and how these organizations move from a notion of implementing social change through their own vision to instigating state agendas, and hence causing mission drift toward state logics. Also, this paper highlights the notion of the coordinating mechanism of decoupling, blending, and assimilation as an innovative organization instrument to decrease mission drift.
... This is because a greater orientation toward global business clients and related capabilities may conflict with prioritizing the social mission. As a result, many studies have focused on how SEs can avoid or manage such "mission drift," for example, through business model innovations (Davies & Chambers, 2018;Davies & Doherty, 2019), social and commercial activity integration (Battilana & Lee, 2014), particular hiring and socialization practices (Battilana & Dorado, 2010), and creating various organizational spaces for managing social-business tensions (Battilana et al., 2015;Ometto et al., 2019). ...
Social enterprises that operate in business-to-business contexts, often out of emerging economies, typically face high expectations from business clients, mainstream competition, and the challenge of operating across distances. In these contexts, social enterprises need to carefully choose which market segments to serve and how to organize their social mission accordingly. Based on the case of impact sourcing—hiring and training of disadvantaged staff for global business services—we seek to better understand this interplay. In general, we find that social enterprises in this context focus on serving either domestic clients with an implicit social mission and an integrated social enterprise model or international clients with a more explicit social mission and a decoupled model. We discuss why both main configurations represent viable social enterprise models in the outsourcing industry, and why, in particular, the professional background of founders plays a key role in these strategic choices. Our findings contribute to a more nuanced and context-sensitive understanding of social enterprise model adoption in emerging economies.
... This is because a greater orientation toward global business clients and related capabilities may conflict with prioritizing the social mission. As a result, many studies have focused on how SEs can avoid or manage such "mission drift," for example, through business model innovations (Davies & Chambers, 2018;Davies & Doherty, 2019), social and commercial activity integration (Battilana & Lee, 2014), particular hiring and socialization practices (Battilana & Dorado, 2010), and creating various organizational spaces for managing social-business tensions (Battilana et al., 2015;Ometto et al., 2019). ...
Social enterprises that operate in business-to-business contexts, often out of emerging economies, typically face high expectations from business clients, mainstream competition, and the challenge of operating across distances. In these contexts, social enterprises need to carefully choose which market segments to serve and how to organize their social mission accordingly. Based on the case of impact sourcing—hiring and training of disadvantaged staff for global business services—we seek to better understand this interplay. In general, we find that social enterprises in this context focus on serving either domestic clients with an implicit social mission and an integrated social enterprise model or international clients with a more explicit social mission and a decoupled model. We discuss why both main configurations represent viable social enterprise models in the outsourcing industry, and why, in particular, the professional background of founders plays a key role in these strategic choices. Our findings contribute to a more nuanced and context-sensitive understanding of social enterprise model adoption in emerging economies.
... Multiple ambitions are the lifeblood of hybrid ventures whose mission is to address major social and environmental challenges through the running of a commercial business (Ometto et al., 2019;Shepherd et al., 2019). Yet, the existence of multiple ambitions can create "mixed feelings" among the venture's stakeholders (Palakshappa et al., 2023). ...
Although the simultaneous presence of multiple ambitions is inherent in hybrid venturing, pursuing social and/or environmental missions while securing commercial viability can generate ambivalence amongst stakeholders. In this study, we draw on the notion of ‘holism’ to show how venture founders both embrace tensioned ambitions and sustain hybridity during critical venture development phases. Based on six years of data on The People’s Supermarket in the UK, we identify three distinct practices––fantasising, bartering, and conjuring––used by founders to harness tensions productively, without compromising their venture’s multiple ambitions. These practices demonstrate founders’ ability to maintain a venture’s hybrid nature throughout the ideation, organisational, and scale-up phases, thereby shedding light on the application of ‘holism’ within the realm of hybrid venturing.
... Whereas the former describes the difficulty of striking a balance between the three dimensions of sustainability, the latter refers to the challenge of expressing these three dimensions at a comparable level. Mission drift occurs when an organisation that pursues a social mission neglects that mission to pursue profit to the detriment of the initial social mission (Ebrahim et al., 2014;Ometto et al., 2019). Mission drift is not necessarily born out of the deliberate intention to neglect the social mission -it can be the result of a sheer struggle for survival (Ebrahim et al., 2014). ...
This document is an introduction to the concept of the triple bottom line business model (3BM) for Edible City Solutions (ECS). It explains where the concept comes from and how ECS can use it to identify, analyse, and improve their own business models. Our target audience are people actively involved in an ECS, such as ECS project managers, ECS initiators, ECS team members, or ECS volunteers.
While this report focuses on the scientific approach towards the concept of the 3BM and summarises insights from scientific literature, the empirical (practical) application of the concept will take place in the work of the Business Consulting Team. The scientific perspective and the empirical outcome of ECS business model analyses conducted by the Business Consulting Team will be merged and made publicly accessible at a later stage, elevating the 3BM for ECS to Technical Readiness Levels 6 to 9.
... However, we are only beginning to see more attention to how, for example, social economy and social innovation ecosystems would need to look like to unfold this capacity (Audretsch, Eichler, & Schwarz, 2022). We also lack insights into how collaboration may move beyond the level of individual relations of cooperation and to a systemic level (Schaltegger, Beckmann, & Hockerts, 2018;Sharma & Bansal, 2016), or how social economy organizations may level up their change-making and overcome factors that typically limit the process to scale, such as compartmentalization that undermines real collective action (Ometto, Gegenhuber, Winter, & Greenwood, 2018). ...
Lack of progress in the area of global sustainable development and difficulties in crisis management highlight the need to transform the economy and find new ways of making society more resilient. The social economy is increasingly recognized as a driver of such transformations; it comprises traditional forms of cooperative or solidarity-based organizations alongside new phenomena such as impact investing or social tech ventures that aim to contribute to the public good. Social Economy Science provides the first comprehensive analysis of why and how social economy organizations create superior value for society. The book draws on organizational theory and transition studies to provide a systematic perspective on complex multi-stakeholder forms of action. It discusses the social economy’s role in promoting innovation for impact, as well as its role as an agent of societal change and as a partner to businesses, governments, and citizens.
... One important obstacle to this aim is mission drift, that is, 'a process of organisational change, where an organisation diverges from its main purpose or mission' (Cornforth, 2014: 4). Many studies demonstrate how mission drift can emerge through the influence of hegemonic actors and institutions (e.g., Ebrahim et al., 2014;Mangen and Brivot, 2015;Ometto et al., 2018). ...
It seems natural to understand organizational democracy as granting members of the organization the right to choose the rules that govern their actions. But what meaning does a rule have if one can choose to change rather than follow it? By investigating the understudied dimension of democracy I call revisability, this article suggests that an organization’s rules can be meaningful – they can effectively coordinate action – while remaining continually open to democratic modification. To support this claim, I present an activist ethnography of the Open Food Network, an alternative organization that builds open-source software for the decentralized coordination of short food chains, working in a democratic, non-hierarchical manner. Using the communicative constitution of organizations literature to conceptualize the requirements of democratic revisability and coordinating rules, I argue that this case demonstrates the possibility of achieving both ends simultaneously through the affordances of new information and communication technologies (ICTs). This article thus contributes an account of the concept of democratic revisability, and a generalized model of one means by which democratically revisable and effective coordinating rules can be established and maintained with the support of ICT affordances.
... Finally, we contribute to better understanding the assumptions embedded in the connection between growth (a foundational concept within entrepreneurship research) and mission drift (Ometto et al., 2019;Grimes et al., 2019;Logue and Grimes, 2022). Enterprise growth hampers the ability to maintain relative attention to social goals. ...
In the Global North, where social entrepreneurs and their stakeholders agree that social enterprise needs to do more for stakeholders than traditional business, social entrepreneurs balancing financial and pro-social goals seek to avoid mission drift by being responsive to their stakeholders. In many areas of the Global South, despite the work of NGOs and foreign aid, social problems remain persistent and pervasive, so social entrepreneurs face vastly different stakeholder demands. Our qualitative study of 36 social entrepreneurs in Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda builds on behavioral theory to understand how social entrepreneurs balance pro-social and
financial goals in this context. We find that they experience a mismatch between their social impact aspirations and the expectations of stakeholders, which leads to concerns of Impact Drift, which we define as the decoupling of pro-social actions from enduring social impact outcomes. Concerns of impact drift prompt a norm-breaking approach to social impact, involving orchestrating novel coalitions of stakeholders and employing heuristics to limit their focus and reassure them about their approach.
... Developing context-relevant and valid instruments to measure SEs' objectives is a key step to understand how SEs manage the tension between social objectives and financial sustainability, and what legal support they need in a specific institutional environment. While SEs' social objectives need not be confined to serving vulnerable groups only (Mulgan, 2016), the pressure for financial sustainability can sometimes divert the organizational resources away from achieving social objectives (Ometto et al., 2019). ...
Purpose
This study aims to measure social enterprises’ (SEs’) social objectives under the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework, and explore the impact of SEs’ social objectives on their choices of legal forms.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used semi-structured questionnaires followed up by field interviews and observations of the sampled SEs. The survey sample includes 80 participants of Social Entrepreneurs Stars Competition in Zhejiang Province of China. The authors conduct content analysis to measure the objectives of SEs. The authors also perform descriptive analysis, chi-square test and regression analysis on the data.
Findings
The findings confirm the theoretical discussions that SEs’ choices of legal forms reflect SEs’ strategies toward achieving social objectives. Similar to certain countries, some SEs in China register as nonprofit entities to concentrate on nonprofitable sustainability objectives, while others register as commercial enterprises or hybrid organizations to generate profits. However, some SEs focus on profitable non-sustainability issues and fail to prioritize social objectives over economic objectives. There are positive effects of social entrepreneurs’ background similarity and negative effects of social entrepreneurs’ educational level on their SEs’ choices to register as commercial enterprises.
Research limitations/implications
Due to the small size and nonrepresentative sample this study is based on, the findings need be further tested by a larger sample. SEs in different service domains rely on different types of financial resources (Mair et al. , 2012; Doherty et al. , 2014). In future research, the model can be expanded to test the effects of service domains and types of financial sources on SEs’ choices of legal forms.
Practical implications
To encourage more societal resources being allocated toward achieving the United Nations’ SDGs, policymakers and SE certification programs are recommended to explicitly incorporate sustainability objectives into the evaluation standards and supportive policies for SEs. Social entrepreneurs who aim to balance the social and economic objectives in their business are suggested to target the population with whom they share similar community background. Training or consulting programs for social entrepreneurs are suggested to provide advice tailored to their socio-economic background and personal experiences.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ this study is the first quantitative analysis to identify factors that associate with SEs’ choice of legal forms in China. The authors developed new instruments to measure SEs’ social objectives and service targets, access to financial resources and social entrepreneurs’ social-economic backgrounds.
... Global research into the scaling journey of social enterprises is emerging (Millar and Hall, 2013). Social enterprises face a different set of challenges in scaling than during the start-up phase (Ometto, Gegenhuber, Winter and Greenwood, 2019). Scaling a social enterprise to achieve a more significant social impact is very different from scaling a commercial organisation, where the key priority is to meet profit-seeking goals. ...
The number of social enterprises has grown exponentially in recent times. International research regarding how social enterprises scale is starting to emerge and is becoming an area of increased focus. Due to their hybridity, social enterprises experience unique scaling challenges, and research has started to examine these experiences. This theoretical paper reviews existing literature on social enterprise scaling and, based on this, proposes a conceptual model for understanding the interdependent factors and elements social enterprises must navigate when scaling. The proposed conceptual model will provide a base for further empirical research. When validated, it will also provide a practical tool for social enterprises exploring scaling possibilities and inform future enterprise and policy supports in this area.
... For example, the social enterprise can alleviate or eliminate unnecessary social problems in social programs that do not meet the needs of the community with little social impact. However, by introducing some of the methods mentioned above, social enterprises (SEs) can improve their SI practices which can reduce the possibility of failure of existing or potential social programs (Ometto et al. 2019). However, for this to eventuate, organizations need to recognize and explore the intentional efforts of those who create, maintain, and disrupt existing 'mindsets' (i.e. ...
This chapter seeks to understand the challenge of social innovation in eco-tourism practices and value creation. Drawing from the concepts of social innovation, this chapter attempts to explore the nature of innovation in different social organizations. Although social innovation contributes to economic growth and continuous development, they are the area where the innovation source usually goes unnoticed. Social innovation about social matters has attracted all fields and sectors with numerous domains. Taken in this way, social innovation should be approached through a new lens, considering the current cultural and business system to be failing to meet social demands allowing the effort to reduce social gaps experienced in different ways. These gaps fill by the eco-tourism sectors in developing the local community economy and conservation of nature. The environmental issue should be considered in every aspect of development to achieve the sustainable goals of social entrepreneurship. Such social innovation represents changes that increase community trust while simultaneously creating value throughout certain areas portrayed as social practices or routines. Therefore, this chapter covers the topic of causing change, social innovation practices, rural development, and value creation.KeywordsSocial innovationEnvironmental issueSocial practicesRural developmentValue creation
... It is not a systems-change strategy since it does not challenge incumbent system frameworks, but rather, involves the more pragmatic separation of competing frames (Janssen, Fayolle, & Wuilaume, 2018). Notably, the concept of decoupling is also used in a slightly different context within the organizational hybridity literature to describe how social enterprises maintain organizational stability in the face of competing frames, usually seen as social mission versus commercial viability (Doherty et al., 2014;Ometto, Gegenhuber, Winter, & Greenwood, 2019;Smith & Besharov, 2019). ...
Research Summary
Critical scholars recognize a disjuncture between the problems identified by social entrepreneurs and the solutions they propose. Existing theory treats this as a problem to be rectified at the organizational level. In this essay, we widen attention to the macro‐oriented systems change strategies of social entrepreneurs. We develop a dynamic typology showing how strategies are reassembled over time to stimulate or deflect desire for systems change. Deriving inspiration from Goffman, we theorize the ways that different types of systems change actor perform systems change via interaction with their environments. Drawing on illustrative cases on the boundaries of social entrepreneurship, we show how the collective action frameworks developed by systems change actors can be adapted and repurposed by their (systems) audiences: effectively turning rebellion into money.
Managerial Summary
Social entrepreneurs often call for systems change to tackle wicked problems such as poverty or climate change. However, the strategies they propose for tackling these problems, such as lending money to poor people are considerably less radical. In this essay, we identify three types of systems change actor distinguished by the degree of systems change they call for. We trace their ideas over time to illustrate how strategies are mediated, and subsequently repurposed through interaction with the systems they seek to change. In conclusion, we call upon researchers and social entrepreneurs to widen their perspectives to incorporate more radical ideas and potentials for systems change, and for greater attention to be devoted to scrutinizing and protecting the integrity of systems change strategies.
... Dans cette veine, plusieurs voies ont ainsi été explorées. L'implication étendue des parties prenantes aux processus de décisions (Ramus & Vaccaro, 2017), des espaces de négociations instanciés au sein de l'entreprise ou au niveau des écosystèmes (Battilana et al., 2020;Ometto et al. 2018), ou encore des modalités de recrutement adaptées (Battilana & Dorado, 2010) ont été vus comme autant de manières de prévenir ces dérives potentielles et pourraient viser à aider les entreprises sociales à rester fidèles à leur mission malgré une concurrence accrue et des pressions, notamment commerciales, divergentes (Tracey & Phillips, 2007 ;Zhao & Grimes, 2016). ...
À l’instar de la France, de nombreux pays proposent désormais des cadres juridiques qui permettent aux sociétés commerciales de s’engager sur une finalité opposable ou « mission » qui ne se résume pas à la poursuite de leurs simples profits. Cette innovation juridique donne lieu aujourd’hui à l’expression de missions très variées, autant sur le fond que la forme. Le droit a en effet laissé une grande liberté aux entreprises à cet égard. L’analyse des premières formes tend à montrer que l’élaboration d’une mission soulève des défis importants : comment définir des engagements pérennes dans des environnements par nature turbulents, et a fortiori quand l’entreprise se donne des objectifs de rupture ou d’innovation ? L’objet de cette thèse est de caractériser les principes et les méthodes qui permettent de formuler une mission conciliant engagement pérenne et contrôlable, et qui en même temps favorise l’innovation. Partant de cas historiques et contemporains d’engagements génératifs, la thèse analyse des cas de dérives par rapport à une mission et leurs causes. Elle propose une modélisation de la mission qui permet alors de caractériser les principaux écueils des formulations de missions. L’analyse montre qu’ils sont liés d’une part au caractère partiellement inconnu des objets sur lesquels portent les promesses et d’autre part aux interrelations entre ces objets. Ce modèle rend donc compte des différents types de missions et de leurs risques associés. Ce travail de recherche permet aussi d’analyser les méthodes déployées par les entreprises pour formuler leur mission et proposer des voies pour surmonter les écueils identifiés. En particulier, la thèse suggère des mises à l’épreuve systématiques des formulations selon une modalité double, soit en éclairant des zones inconnues, soit en montrant les propagations possibles des promesses et les risques de contradictions qu’elles génèrent. La thèse dégage ainsi des propositions méthodologiques pour assurer la cohérence entre les promesses et la possibilité de juger de l’intégrité des conduites futures.
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Many countries, such as France, now offer legal frameworks that allow business corporations to commit to an opposable purpose or « mission » that goes beyond the mere pursuit of profits. This legal innovation now gives rise to the development of a wide variety of purposes, both in terms of form and content. Indeed, the law has given considerable freedom to companies in this respect. The analysis of the first forms tends to show that the elaboration of a mission raises important challenges: how to define long-lasting commitments in turbulent environments, and a fortiori when the company gives itself objectives of rupture or innovation? The aim of this thesis is to characterize the principles and methods for formulating a mission that reconciles sustainable and controllable commitments, and which at the same time promotes innovation. Starting with historical and contemporary cases of generative engagements, the thesis analyzes cases of mission drift and their causes. It proposes a mission model that enables the characterization of the main pitfalls of mission formulations. The analysis shows that they are linked on the one hand to the partially unknown character of the objects on which the promises are made and on the other hand to the interrelations between these objects. This model thus accounts for the different types of missions and their associated risks. This research work also provides an opportunity to analyze the methods used by companies to formulate their mission and to propose ways to overcome the pitfalls identified. In particular, the thesis suggests systematically testing the formulations in a double modality, either by shedding light on unknown areas, or by showing the possible propagations of the promises and the risks of contradictions they generate. The thesis draws out some methodological proposals to ensure the coherence between promises and the possibility of judging the integrity of future conduct.
... In other words, these aspects address the creation of social value, the relationship between social enterprises and individuals they aid, the demand and supply relationship between social enterprises (as suppliers) and buyers, and the relationship between social enterprises and the general public. Thus, they are broadly consistent with prior work on social enterprises about engagement and management of their mission (Brooks, 2009;Cornforth, 2014;Ebrahim, Battilana and Mair, 2014;Kulshrestha, Sahay and Sengupta, 2022;Miller and Wesley, 2010;Ometto et al., 2019). ...
Social enterprises have gained attention in recent decades. Many universities, private institutions, and government agencies promote social enterprises to solve social problems and create social value. Social entrepreneurship can be materialized in two ways: one from social issues to entrepreneurship and the other from entrepreneurship to social issues. The process from social issues to entrepreneurship is mainly concerned with assisting individuals, disadvantaged groups, or communities in addressing social issues in relation to establishing social enterprises. The process from entrepreneurship to social issues leads existing enterprises or entrepreneurs to explore social issues that may reveal economic opportunities and create social enterprises. This study focuses on these two types of social entrepreneurship and attempts to determine differences between the entrepreneurship and business model, characteristics and entrepreneurial spirits, and social impact. This study employs comprehensive thinking, collation, and analysis of different management patterns and content patterns of social enterprises to understand the different entrepreneurial styles. This study found that social enterprises created from social issues to entrepreneurship were more concerned with other people's problems. Their funding appeared less reliant on earning and repayment. The resources were more diverse. Such social enterprises might focus their care on people or communities they missioned to help and not practice profit or surplus distribution to shareholders. On the contrary, social enterprises from entrepreneurship to social issues were inspired by their own issues. A large part of such social enterprises' funding might be from earnings or repayment. Such social enterprises might involve fewer volunteers, make less use of free services, focus on exchanges of products or services for repayment, and distribute profit or surplus to shareholders.
... One important obstacle to this aim is mission drift, that is, 'a process of organisational change, where an organisation diverges from its main purpose or mission' (Cornforth, 2014: 4). Many studies demonstrate how mission drift can emerge through the influence of hegemonic actors and institutions (e.g., Ebrahim et al., 2014;Mangen and Brivot, 2015;Ometto et al., 2018). ...
'No decision is permanent!': Achieving democratic revisability in alternative organizations through the affordances of new information and communication technologies
It seems natural to understand organizational democracy as granting members of the organization the right to choose the rules that govern their actions. But what meaning does a rule have if one can choose to change rather than follow it? By investigating the understudied dimension of democracy I call revisability, this paper suggests that an organization’s rules can be meaningful – they can effectively coordinate action – while remaining continually open to democratic modification. To support this claim, I present an activist ethnography of the Open Food Network, an alternative organization that builds open-source software for the decentralized coordination of short food chains, working in a democratic, non-hierarchical manner. Using the communicative constitution of organizations literature to conceptualize the requirements of democratic revisability and coordinating rules, I argue that this case demonstrates the possibility of achieving both ends simultaneously through the affordances of new information and communication technologies (ICTs). This paper thus contributes an account of the concept of democratic revisability, and a generalized model of one means by which democratically revisable and effective coordinating rules can be established and maintained with the support of ICT affordances.
his study examines how philanthropic foundations develop innovative approaches to grant-making by collaborating with social entrepreneurs who are embedded in marginalized communities. Traditionally, foundations award grants that meet predetermined strategic objectives that support their theories of change. However, this study explores an alternative approach known as participatory grant-making, in which philanthropic foundations cede control over strategy and finance by adopting an innovative approach that is based more on trust and collaboration. By analyzing in-depth interviews from 16 executives, directors, and social entrepreneurs in the United States, we demonstrate how participatory grant-making constitutes a social innovation that inverts traditional power dynamics in the philanthropic field by enhancing legitimacy, and thereby facilitating a more interconnected, inclusive, and equitable approach to solving social problems. This article demonstrates how the implementation of participatory grant-making programs can help to counter the increasing criticisms levied at traditional approaches to grant-making.
Social enterprises address societal problems with conventional business models. While scholars have extensively theorized the trade-offs between social and financial goals, little is known about the factors that affect the co-existence of these dual objectives. We theorize social enterprises’ ability to balance their social and financial performance as a function of their size and experience. We argue that the acuteness of social-financial trade-offs varies across organizations and that social enterprises get better at balancing their dual objectives as they grow larger and older. We study microfinance institutions (MFIs), which are social enterprises that provide financial services to the poor. Using data on 611 MFIs, the empirical analysis confirmed our predictions. We attribute our findings to learning effects and efficiency gains. Overall, in contrast to studies that gloss over heterogeneities among social enterprises, our study shows that the ability of these organizations to balance their dual goals depends on firm-level characteristics.
This study draws on institutional theory to provide insights into how new forms of organizations gain legitimacy under institutional voids. Based on interviews with leaders of 42 Chinese social enterprises (SEs), we find that dominant stakeholders—the state—are ambivalent about new ventures’ agendas and practices, which is displayed in their being sometimes supportive and other times skeptical, even hostile. SEs favor the contingent engagement political strategy to develop mutually beneficial relationships with the state while keeping a healthy distance. This enables them to gain sociopolitical legitimacy in a nonthreatening and acceptable way for survival and growth. The findings further highlighted the individual, organizational, and environmental factors that condition SE legitimation approaches, including the form of state control, leaders’ political capital, organizational social mission, and regional political environment. This study makes theoretical contributions to the institutional and SE literatures, highlighting stakeholder ambivalence as an essential characteristic of an institutional context fraught with institutional voids.
Purpose
By focussing on the anticipated emotional reactions of volunteers and drawing on theories of motivation and identity, this study investigates how volunteers react to different options of the entrepreneurial model of Amigos for Children Foundation (ACF). The paper proposes a hypothetical model for volunteer’s emotional reactions to potential business model changes. We suggest the relative importance of intrinsic motivational factors, professional identity and attitudes towards business organisations as mediating variables. ACF works exclusively with university students as volunteers, so their specific characteristics may limit some of the conclusions and propositions of this qualitative research, but public policy consequences of supporting similar entrepreneurial transitions can be generally relevant.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with volunteers of ACF, a Hungarian non-profit organisation, we explore the challenges of transitioning into a social enterprise.
Findings
Previous research showed controversial results about the impact of pay on the motivations of volunteers. For a non-profit organisation that would like to utilise the competencies of its volunteers, introducing a market-based service may mean additional financial resources and the potential loss of human resources. Understanding the moderating factors of volunteers' reactions might help build better theories for managing the non-profit-social enterprise transition and designing public policies to support scaling up the impact of successful social purpose organisations.
Originality/value
For practitioners, the research underlines the importance of participatory mechanisms in volunteer management. By managing transitions better, non-profit organisations can expand their social impact by acquiring more financial resources through market-based activities closely related to their original activities and keeping their volunteers. The study elucidates the relevance of the crowding-out effect and indicates some hypothetical moderating variables influencing its potential degree.
Although grassroots initiatives in the renewable energy transition are flourishing, their embeddedness in local contexts challenges their capacity to spread their impact on a broader scale. Certainly, while scaling up has been described as difficult to combine with local embeddedness, little is known on the specific nature of the tensions involved in combining the two. Studying a federation of citizen renewable energy (RE) cooperatives in the south of France, we show that the engagement in a scaling-up process at a regional level generates three main kinds of tensions associated with specific dimensions of local embeddedness: natural, cultural, and political. We emphasize how these dimensions are likely to be threatened when the federation engages the cooperatives in a rapid scaling-up dynamic in which the drive to industrialize projects and find funding is dominant. We acknowledge the effects of these tensions on grassroots sustainability initiatives and collective organizing processes.
This chapter invites the reader to examine the strategic place of women in the mission of God as lived out through God's organization—the church. The mission as the “main thing” is a healthy paradigm if that perspective never forgets the importance of “people” as essential agents in mission participation and fulfillment. Women are persons, and this chapter explores various examples from the Hebrew and Christian scriptures that highlight the often-unseen women at the center of God’s redemptive plan.
Lack of progress in the area of global sustainable development and difficulties in crisis management highlight the need to transform the economy and find new ways of making society more resilient. The social economy is increasingly recognized as a driver of such transformations; it comprises traditional forms of cooperative or solidarity-based organizations alongside new phenomena such as impact investing or social tech ventures that aim to contribute to the public good. Social Economy Science provides the first comprehensive analysis of why and how social economy organizations create superior value for society. The book draws on organizational theory and transition studies to provide a systematic perspective on complex multi-stakeholder forms of action. It discusses the social economy’s role in promoting innovation for impact, as well as its role as an agent of societal change and as a partner to businesses, governments, and citizens.
La literatura previa se ha centrado casi exclusivamente en comprender la degeneración cooperativa, prestando escasa atención al fenómeno de la regeneración, que ha sido abordado fundamentalmente desde un punto de vista teórico. Este artículo proporciona un análisis longitudinal de un proceso regenerativo acometido en el grupo Mondragon, uno de los grupos cooperativos más relevantes e influyentes del mundo. La gran dimensión organizacional y dispersión geográfica que caracterizan a la mayoría de cooperativas de este grupo implica un proceso de regeneración mucho más complejo que el que cabe esperar en cooperativas pequeñas y medianas que operan exclusivamente a nivel local. El marco teórico de la investigación se basa en las tesis de la degeneración y regeneración cooperativa, así como en recientes contribuciones surgidas en torno a la teoría del ciclo de vida de las cooperativas. El estudio muestra los desafíos para reintroducir mecanismos de gobernanza democrática en organizaciones cooperativas de gran tamaño que compiten en mercados globales, así como el efecto de la dispersión geográfica en el declive del sentimiento de pertenencia entre los socios de las cooperativas matrices. Con todo ello, el artículo contribuye a una línea de investigación fundamental centrada en la evolución organizacional de las cooperativas ante un contexto de mercado muy cambiante, competitivo y globalizado.
Despite the growing academic and policy interest in social enterprises, existing debates fail to answer how these organisations innovate without compromising their social mission. In particular, the mechanisms that assist social enterprises to innovate in line with their mission have been overlooked in the social enterprise literature. Through an empirical study of four social enterprises in Scotland, UK, we focus on Design Thinking and show that, through stimulating the engagement of diverse stakeholders, generating organisational knowledge and challenging traditional power dynamics, Design Thinking assists social enterprises in inducing mission-aligned innovation. Our article expands Kong's (2010) Intellectual Capital theory, shows its applicability in the field of social entrepreneurship, and draws implications for policy and practice.
This chapter describes the journey of a social entrepreneur, Vijay Mahajan, from his early formative influences to his retirement from the enterprise; it intertwines with the history of the Basix Social Enterprise Group, one of the pioneering social enterprises in the world, which helped promote the livelihoods of millions of poor people, initially using microcredit. The narrative is written as a series of “encounters with the truth” and describes how each encounter led to introspection for the entrepreneur and strategic changes for the enterprise. The first encounter led the entrepreneur to dedicate his life to livelihood promotion work and set up an NGO called PRADAN; the second led to a search for a sustainable financing model for livelihood promotion and to the establishment of Basix as a microfinance institution. The third was based on the impact assessment of the first five years and led to moving beyond microcredit to a “triad” of services for livelihood promotion. The fourth was based on discovering the dark side of microcredit and led to building a new regulatory framework for the sector. The fifth led to a reaffirmation of the livelihoods mission of Basix, this time through a group of social enterprises well beyond microcredit.KeywordsSocial enterpriseSocial entrepreneurMicrocreditLivelihood promotionAgricultural servicesInstitutional development
This paper empirically investigates the effect of the quality of regional institutions on social enterprises’ employment growth. Using an original panel dataset of social enterprises during 2011–2020, FE and GMM estimates provide three findings. First, higher institutional quality at the regional level positively affects firms’ employment. Second, the effect is heterogenous and varies across firms’ size. Third, corruption in the provision of public services significantly inhibits the “speed” of employment growth for Micro and SMEs.
In efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, social entrepreneurship has gained popularity as a vehicle for positive change in developing countries. The multiplicity of stakeholders, diverging sociocultural contexts and the hybrid mission complicate the process of legitimacy construction for social entrepreneurs as a basis for the acquisition of scarce resources. This study investigates how social entrepreneurs operating in Sub‐Saharan Africa and Asia tackle this challenge of bridging conflicting directions in discursive interaction with their European funders. We conduct a multimodal discourse analysis to uncover discursive strategies for legitimacy construction by combining linguistic data from interviews with visual data from social media accounts. Legitimacy construction, and thus resource acquisition, centers on three aspects which interlink pragmatic, cognitive and moral legitimacy: developing innovative solutions, mobilizing private‐sector efficiency, and contributing to local empowerment. Presenting these aspects as mutually reinforcing overcomes contradictions between social and business logics and provides an expanded space for legitimacy construction of social entrepreneurship. Discursively constructing legitimacy around a ‘glorified version of social entrepreneurship’ mobilizes resources but downplays the risk of being an entrepreneur in the Global South, contributing to increasing corporatization of social purpose organizations.
Scaling has recently found its way into the academic discourse. However, the term has been used inconsistently and mixed up with other terms such as growth. To overcome these impediments to knowledge accumulation, we review the literature, identifying four broad applications of the scaling concept: market scaling, volume scaling, financial scaling, and organizational scaling. Building on their commonalities and setting scaling apart from growth, we develop an inclusive definition of scaling: Scaling describes an increase in the size of a focal subject that is accompanied by a larger-than-proportional increase in the performance resulting from the said subject. We further propose a set of measures that makes it possible to compare the scaling performance of organizations and track their scaling performance over time. Based on our insights as well as a list of “hot topics” in the management literature, we conclude by identifying promising areas for further research.
Although organizational mission is central to social venturing, little is known about the nature and origins of social ventures' missions. In particular, the field lacks a framework for understanding the moral content of nascent ventures' “prosocial” missions that rely on quite different—and potentially conflicting—moral values. We engage in an exploratory study, drawing on moral foundations theory and upper echelons theory to develop framing questions related to the moral discourse in social venture missions and the role of founders' political ideology in relation to this moral discourse. We construct a novel dataset using computer-aided text analysis on the mission statements of over 50,000 nascent nonprofit ventures in the United States, supplemented by voter registration data from 17 states and Washington, D.C. Our findings reveal rich nuance in the moral discourse found in organizations' mission statements. Furthermore, founding teams' political ideologies are strongly associated with the moral discourse in their social ventures' stated missions—and in ways that differ intriguingly from findings in moral psychology at the individual level. We draw on these new insights to develop a roadmap for future research on organizational mission in relation to social venturing, moral markets, mission drift, and political ideology.
This article examines how organizational experience influences social enterprise responses to impact assessment practices. Limited attention has been paid to why organizations resist or challenge impact assessment practices or how prior experience with impact assessment may shape organizational responses. The study draws on interviews with practitioners involved in social enterprise–impact investor dyads in Australia and the United Kingdom. The findings reveal that social enterprises enact either combative or collaborative responses in their relationships with impact investors based on past experiences with impact assessment. The study shows how more experienced social enterprises reach a state of impact lock-in—where they become committed to particular approaches to understanding, measuring, and reporting impact. The article contributes to the literature on impact assessment and impact investment by showing how organizational experience shapes divergent reactions to the demands imposed by impact investors, creating complementary forces of institutionalization and contestation of impact assessment practice.
Innovation and Scaling for Impact forces us to reassess how social sector organizations create value. Drawing on a decade of research, Christian Seelos and Johanna Mair transcend widely held misconceptions, getting to the core of what a sound impact strategy entails in the nonprofit world. They reveal an overlooked nexus between investments that might not pan out (innovation) and expansion based on existing strengths (scaling). In the process, it becomes clear that managing this tension is a difficult balancing act that fundamentally defines an organization and its impact.
The authors examine innovation pathologies that can derail organizations by thwarting their efforts to juggle these imperatives. Then, through four rich case studies, they detail innovation archetypes that effectively sidestep these pathologies and blend innovation with scaling. Readers will come away with conceptual models to drive progress in the social sector and tools for defining the future of their organizations.
Purpose
The case of a tourism cooperative created by an underprivileged community in Northeastern Brazil is used to analyze the main elements of the process of social innovation, while assessing the applicability of the conceptual framework proposed by CRISES (Centre de Recherche sur les Innovations Sociales) in that context.
Design/methodology/approach
The case study was based mainly on content analysis of semi-structured interviews with cooperative managers and members, complemented by direct observation, analysis of documents and data from secondary sources.
Findings
The process of social innovation in the tourism cooperative presents distinctive characteristics that are not adequately captured by the dimensions that are proposed in the CRISES framework. Alternative frameworks may contribute additional perspectives to complement and expand the current approach to the analysis of social innovation in diverse contexts.
Practical implications
The study indicates the need for more appropriate territorially-based metrics and assessment models for particular configurations and settings of social innovation, such as in this case.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to a better understanding of the diversity of social innovation possibilities and how extant analytical frameworks may be adapted and expanded to capture such diversity.
The term ‘social innovation’ is used to describe a broad range of organizational and inter-organizational activity that is ostensibly designed to address the most deep-rooted ‘problems’ of society, such as poverty, inequality and environmental degradation. Theoretically, however, this presents challenges because many of the ideas and practices grouped under the label of social innovation may have relatively little in common. In this article, we outline a simple framework for categorizing different types of social innovation – social entrepreneurship, social intrapreneurship, and social extrapreneurship – which we believe provides a useful basis for theory building in this area. We also offer suggestions for future research with the potential to deepen, extend and refine our typology.
"Grand challenges" are formulations of global problems that can be plausibly addressed through coordinated and collaborative effort. In this Special Research Forum, we showcase management research that examines societal problems that individuals, organizations, communities, and nations face around the world. We develop a framework to guide future research to provide systematic empirical evidence on the formulation, articulation, and implementation of grand challenges. We highlight several factors that likely enhance or suppress the attainment of collective goals, and identify representative research questions for future empirical work. In so doing, we aspire to encourage management scholars to engage in tackling broader societal challenges through their collaborative research and collective insight.
Hybrid organizations pursuing a social mission while relying on a commercial business model have paved the way for a new approach to achieving societal impact. Although they bear strong promise, social enterprises are also fragile organizations that must walk a fine line between achieving a social mission and living up to the requirements of the market. This article moves beyond generic recommendations about managing hybrids in order to highlight a typology of social business hybrids and discuss how each of the four proposed types of hybrid organizations can be managed in order to avoid the danger of mission drift and better achieve financial sustainability.
Process studies focus attention on how and why things emerge, develop, grow, or terminate over time. We identify various ontological assumptions underlying process research, explore its methods and challenges, and draw out some of its substantive contributions revealed in this Special Research Forum on Process Studies of Change in Organization and Management. Process studies take time seriously, illuminate the role of tensions and contradictions in driving patterns of change, and show how interactions across levels contribute to change. They may also reveal the dynamic activity underlying the maintenance and reproduction of stability.
This article explores how organizations balance the pressures to pursue efficiency through standardization with the need to remain responsive to local needs. The study combines rich ethnography with detailed loan data to show that both standardization and flexibility through relational ties provide substantial organizational benefits but also carry significant costs; thus, no strategy is inherently superior, and their coexistence generates the best results. Such coexistence, however, creates contradictions that must be managed. Here, I use microfinance as a strategic setting and gain analytic leverage from the random assignment across branches of loan officers who exhibit significant heterogeneity in rule enforcement styles: some enforce rules strictly, whereas others frequently bend them to respond to client needs. I find that loan officers with relational styles exercise discretion productively to enhance organizational performance. Yet their effectiveness is contingent on the presence of rule-enforcing peers, as evidenced by the significant underperformance of branches with a high concentration of officers of either type. In contrast, branches that contain discretionary diversity, or a balance between enforcement styles, perform best. This is not due to diversity per se, but because loan officers process decisions in local credit committees. Committees that contain discretionary diversity generate a productive tension that induces participants to justify decisions along broader organizational goals, thus maintaining a productive balance between standardization and flexibility. Implications for organizational theory and practice are discussed.
In this article, we theorize a novel approach to addressing the world's grand challenges based on the philosophical tradition of American pragmatism and the sociological concept of robust action. Grounded in prior empirical organizational research, we identify three robust strategies that organizations can employ in tackling issues such as climate change and poverty alleviation: participatory architecture, multivocal inscriptions and distributed experimentation. We demonstrate how these strategies operate, the manner in which they are linked, the outcomes they generate, and why they are applicable for resolving grand challenges. We conclude by discussing our contributions to research on robust action and grand challenges, as well as some implications for research on stakeholder theory, institutional theory and theories of valuation.
This research builds on theory about how identification develops when members differ in which organizational values they hold to be important. It is relatively well established that conflict and dis-identification arise under such conditions. In the socially responsible retail company I studied, in contrast, I found identification as well as dis-identification. Both outcomes emerged from members' interactions with others whose values and behaviors differed from their own. Identification arose when managers interpreted and enacted organizational values for frontline employees by developing integrative solutions, removing ideology, and routinizing ideology. Dis-identification developed in the absence of these practices. The resulting process model suggests a relational ecology of identification, in which identification emerges from the combination of bottom-up interactive processes among organizational members and top-down interpretations and enactments by managers. This model advances understanding of the relational dynamics of identification, offers new insight into how organizations can benefit from multiple identities, and illuminates the double-edged sword of ideology in organizations.
The paper investigates the policy of solidarity economy in the federal government, implemented since 2003 with the creation of the National Secretariat of Solidarity Economy (SENAES). Based on the theoretical model of Kingdon (1995), the article examines, first, the political process (in a broad sense) who succeeded his inclusion as a public policy to generate jobs and income. Next, we analyze the projects and actions developed in the program between 2003 and 2010, with emphasis on their guidelines, internal structure, budget allocation and executionFinally, the article analyzes also what the main partners of SENAES these years to the development of other programs that interface with the solidarity economy, and thus could improve the adherence of the subject within the government. The analysis suggests that the model of Kingdon explains the process of inserting the solidarity economy as public policy in 2003, although this insertion is only one stage of the cycle. Defined its constitution rules, there is a dispute of the program within the government: past eight years, there was no effective intervention of the government to the point of consolidating the socio-economic practices - broadcast by solidarity economy - as a strategy for entering the real world work, or even create an institutional environment that encourages the formalization of associative economic groups. Despite its low budget allocation compared to other programs MTE, the PESD was not constituted as a referral program to a new development strategy, even if the SENAES has managed to coalesce around their important social and political forces for the defense of solidarity economy as a public policy. It shows and discusses the integration of policies and conduct of solidarity economy in the federal government, revealing that the issue did not rise to the macro-political, gravitating in a marginal field, outside the core, in search of space for your internal valuation. While it is regarded merely as a palliative alternative to the problem of unemployment, can hardly meet the antagonisms and conflicts of interest that prevent their development.
Work on social entrepreneurship constitutes a field of study that intersects a number of domains, including entrepreneurial studies, social innovation, and nonprofit management. Scholars are beginning to contribute to the development of this new discipline through efforts that attempt to trace the emergence of social entrepreneurship as well as by comparing it to other organizational activities such as conventional entrepreneurship. However, as a nascent field, social entrepreneurship scholars are in the midst of a number of debates involving definitional and conceptual clarity, boundaries of the field, and a struggle to arrive at a set of relevant and meaningful research questions. This paper examines the promise of social entrepreneurship as a domain of inquiry and suggests a number of research areas and research questions for future study.
Work on social entrepreneurship constitutes a field of study that intersects a number of domains, including entrepreneurial studies, social innovation, and nonprofit management. Scholars are beginning to contribute to the development of this new discipline through efforts that attempt to trace the emergence of social entrepreneurship as well as by comparing it to other organizational activities such as conventional entrepreneurship. However, as a nascent field, social entrepreneurship scholars are in the midst of a number of debates involving definitional and conceptual clarity, boundaries of the field, and a struggle to arrive at a set of relevant and meaningful research questions. This paper examines the promise of social entrepreneurship as a domain of inquiry and suggests a number of research areas and research questions for future study.
Draft date April 2012; Forthcoming in the Academy of Management Journal Hybrid organizations combine institutional logics in their efforts to generate innovative solutions to complex problems. They face unintended consequences of that institutional complexity, however, which may impede their efforts. Past scholars have emphasized conflicting external demands, and competing internal claims on organizational identity. Data from an in-depth field study of the public-private Cambridge Energy Alliance suggest another consequence – paradoxes of performing (Smith & Lewis 2011) that generate ambiguity about whether certain organizational outcomes represent success or failure. This paper develops a process model of navigating such paradoxes: in sensemaking about paradoxical outcomes, actors grapple with the definition of success and can transform the organizational logic. The result can be oscillation among logics, or novel synthesis between them when outside perspectives enable a clearer view of the paradox. Hybrid organizations' capacity for innovation depends in part on the results of this change process.
The impacts of the global economic crisis of 2008, the intractable problems of persistent poverty and environmental change have focused attention on organizations that combine enterprise with an embedded social purpose. Scholarly interest in social enterprise (SE) has progressed beyond the early focus on definitions and context to investigate their management and performance. From a review of the SE literature, the authors identify hybridity, the pursuit of the dual mission of financial sustainability and social purpose, as the defining characteristic of SEs. They assess the impact of hybridity on the management of the SE mission, financial resource acquisition and human resource mobilization, and present a framework for understanding the tensions and trade-offs resulting from hybridity. By examining the influence of dual mission and conflicting institutional logics on SE management the authors suggest future research directions for theory development for SE and hybrid organizations more generally.
We explore how new types of hybrid organizations (organizations that combine institutional logics in unprecedented ways) can develop and maintain their hybrid nature in the absence of a "ready-to-wear" model for handling the tensions between the logics they combine. The results of our comparative study of two pioneering commercial microfinance organizations suggest that to be sustainable, new types of hybrid organizations need to create a common organizational identity that strikes a balance between the logics they combine. Our evidence further suggests that the crucial early levers for developing such an organizational identity among organization members are hiring and socialization policies.
Free spaces are arenas insulated from the control of elites in organizations and societies. A basic question is whether they incubate challenges to authority. We suggest that free spaces foster collective empowerment when they assemble large numbers of people, arouse intense emotion, trigger collective identities, and enable individuals to engage in costly collective action. We analyze challenges to authority that invite repression: mutinies of regiments in the East India Company’s Bengal Native Army in India in 1857. We take advantage of an exogenous source of variation in the availability of free spaces—religious festivals. We predict that mutinies are most likely to occur at or right after a religious festival and find that the hazard of mutiny declines with time since a festival. We expect community ties to offer alternate avenues of mobilization, such as when regiments were stationed close to the towns and villages from which they were recruited. Moreover, festivals are likely to be more potent instantiations of free spaces when regiments were exposed to an oppositional identity, such as a Christian mission. Yet even free spaces have a limited ability to trigger collective action, such as when the political opportunity structure is adverse and prospective participants are deterred by greater chances of failure. These predictions are supported by analyses of daily event-history data of mutinies in 1857, suggesting that free spaces are an organizational weapon of the weak and not a substitute for dissent.
If stakeholder theory is to become a full theory of business—society relationships, it will have to develop a better understanding of processes by which stakeholders may gain and hold influence over firms. A better understanding of the political processes involved is required. This paper—as well as the papers in this special issue—takes a political `view' to addressing the issue, and thereby extends the currently dominant demographic and structural approaches. It suggests that the influence of stakeholders over firms is the temporary outcome of processes of action, reaction, and interaction among various parties. Consequently, the further advancement of stakeholder theory would benefit from the adoption of process-research methods and thinking.
This paper traces the main lines of a process of ‘entrepreneurization’ of a local community in Argentina. It highlights how the development of the community in working spaces generated through the interaction between community members and external actors fosters the creation of an entrepreneurial culture and of new communitarian roles and structures. We further argue that the process of entrepreneurization enables to rethink the construct of community, by illustrating how Gemeinschaft-like mutual and tight relationships within the community are constantly mixed up with Gesellschaft-like interactions with external actors and processes of internal segmentation. If the paper shows the importance of central elements of the ‘traditional’ Gemeinschaft for the community to develop an effective entrepreneurial culture, it also suggests that the emergence of working spaces and the community segmentation into specific “sub-worlds” contributes to foster the capacity of community members to take entrepreneurial initiatives so as to participate in the construction of the structures shaping their future lives.
This paper presents a model of innovation, knowledge brokering, that explains how some organizations are able to routinely innovate by recombining their past knowledge in new ways. While existing theories of organizational learning and innovation are useful, the links between them are crucial for understanding how existing knowledge becomes the raw materials from which individuals in organizations construct innovative solutions. This model develops these links by grounding processes of learning and innovation in the larger social context within which they occur. Using a microsociological perspective, this article draws together research spanning levels of analysis to explain innovation as the dissembling and reassembling of extant ideas, artifacts, and people. Previous research has suggested that firms spanning multiple domains may innovate by moving ideas from where they are known to where they are not, in the process creating new combinations of existing ideas. This paper more fully develops this process by linking the cognitive, social, and structural activities it comprises. Knowledge brokering involves exploiting the preconditions for innovation that reside within the larger social structure by bridging multiple domains, learning about the resources within those domains, linking that knowledge to new situations, and finally building new networks around the innovations that emerge from the process. This article also considers the origins of knowledge brokers as firms committed to this innovation strategy, the structural and cultural supports for the knowledge brokering process, and several obstacles to the process that these firms experience. Finally, I discuss the implications of this model for further research on innovation and learning, and the implications for other organizations seeking to establish their own capabilities for brokering knowledge.
In Great Minds In Management Ken G. Smith and Michael A. Hitt have brought together some of the most influential and original thinkers in management. Their contributions to this volume not only outline their landmark contributions to management theory, but also reflect on the process of theory development, presenting their own personal accounts of the gestation of these theories. The result is not only an ambitious and original panorama of the key ideas in management theory presented by their originators, but also a unique collection of reflections on the process of theory development, an area which to date little has been written about by those who have actually had experience of building theory. In their concluding chapter, Ken G. Smith and Michael A. Hitt draw together some common themes about the development of management theory over the last half a century, and suggest some of the conclusions to be drawn about how theory comes into being.
We examine the factors that influence the social performance of hybrid organizations that pursue a social mission and sustain their operations through commercial activities by studying work integration social enterprises (WISEs). We argue that both social imprinting, defined as a founding team's early emphasis on accomplishing the organization's social mission, and economic productivity are important drivers of a WISE's social performance. However, there is a paradox inherent in the social imprinting of WISEs: Although social imprinting directly enhances a WISE's social performance, social imprinting also indirectly weakens social performance by negatively affecting economic productivity. Results based on panel data of French WISEs gathered between 2003 and 2007 are congruent with our predictions. To understand how socially imprinted WISEs may mitigate this negative relationship between social imprinting and economic productivity, we also conduct a comparative analysis of case studies. We find that one effective approach is to assign responsibility for social and economic activities to distinct groups while creating "spaces of negotiation"-arenas of interaction that allow members of each group to discuss the trade-offs that they face. We conclude by highlighting the conditions under which spaces of negotiation can effectively be used to maintain a productive tension in hybrid organizations.
This paper advances the conception of social entrepreneurs as caring entrepreneurs. We argue that the care ethics of social entrepreneurs, implying the pursuit of caring goals through caring processes, can be challenged when they engage in the process of scaling up their ventures. We propose that social entrepreneurs can sustain their care ethics as the essential dimension of their venture only if they are able to build a caring enterprise. Organizational care designates the set of organizing principles that facilitate the embedding of care ethics at an organizational level, beyond the imprinting induced by social entrepreneurs’ personal ethics.
In order to advance the micro-foundations of institutional theory, we explore how individuals within organizations experience and respond to competing institutional logics. Starting with the premises that these responses are driven by the individuals’ degree of adherence to each competing logic (whether novice, familiar or identified), and that individuals may resort to five types of responses (ignorance, compliance, resistance, combination or compartmentalization), we develop a comprehensive model that predicts which response organizational members are likely to activate as they face two competing logics. Our model contributes to an emergent political theory of institutional change by predicting what role organizational members are likely to play in the organizational battles for logics dominance or in organizational attempts at crafting hybrid configurations.
This article explores how hybrid organizations, which incorporate competing institutional logics, internally manage the logics that they embody. Relying on an inductive comparative case study of four work integration social enterprises embedded in competing social welfare and commercial logics, we show that, instead of adopting strategies of decoupling or compromising, as the literature typically suggests, these organizations selectively coupled intact elements prescribed by each logic. This strategy allowed them to project legitimacy to external stakeholders without having to engage in costly deceptions or negotiations. We further identify a specific hybridization pattern that we refer to as "Trojan horse," whereby organizations that entered the work integration field with low legitimacy because of their embeddedness in the commercial logic strategically incorporated elements from the social welfare logic in an attempt to gain legitimacy and acceptance. Surprisingly, they did so more than comparable organizations originating from the social welfare logic. These findings suggest that, when lacking legitimacy in a given field, hybrids may manipulate the templates provided by the multiple logics in which they are embedded in an attempt to gain acceptance. Overall, our findings contribute to a better understanding of how organizations can survive and thrive when embedded in pluralistic institutional environments.
The organizational goal concept is important for significant types of organizational research but its utility has been downgraded in recent scholarship. This paper reviews critically key contributions to conceptualizing the organizational goal and synthesizes many of their elements into a more concrete and comprehensive conceptualization. The efforts of Etzioni, Seashore and Yuchtman, Simon, and Thompson to bypass the need for a goal concept in evaluative and other behavioral research are unconvincing in important respects. However, they are persuasive in underscoring the importance of viewing organizational goals as multiple and as empirically determined. Perrow, Gross, and others convincingly suggest a dual conceptualization, so that goals are dichotomized into those with external referents (transitive goals) and those with internal referents (reflexive goals). Deniston et al. contribute the desirability of subsetting the goals of organizations into “program goals” and of differentiating goals from both subgoals and activities. The existence and relative importance of organizational goals and an allied concept, “operative goals,” may be operationally determined by current social science methods. The goal concept as presented here has implications for the evaluation of organizational effectiveness, for research on organizational behavior, for organization theory, and for views of the role of organizations in society.
The recent emergence in American politics of a novel form of social-change activity, professionalized reform, is studied using the National Council of Churches as an example. Organizational growth and development is argued to have produced oligarchic rule by a professionalized staff. But contrary to Michels' classic "iron law of oligarchy" thesis, professional staff members transformed the operative goals of the organization in a radical rather than conservative direction. A revised theory of organizational transformation is advanced, specifying the conditions under which oligarchy emerges and supports such a radical goal transformation.
It is difficult to introduce the concept of organizational goal without reifying the organization-treating it as something more than a system of interacting individuals. On the other hand, the concept of goal appears indispensable to organization theory. This paper proposes a definition of "organizational goal" that resolves this dilemma. The goal of an action is seldom unitary, but generally consists of a whole set of constraints the action must satisfy. It appears convenient to use the term "organizational goal" to refer to constraints, or sets of constraints, imposed by the organizational role, that have only an indirect relation with the personal motives of the individual who fills the role. More narrowly, "organizational goal" may be used to refer particularly to the constraint sets that define roles at the upper levels of the administrative hierarchy. In actual organizations, the decision-making mechanism is a loosely coupled, partially decentralized structure in which different sets of constraints may impinge on decisions at different organizational locations. Although the description of organizational goals is consequently complex, the concept of goal can still be introduced in an entirely operational manner.
This paper takes seriously the call for strategy-as-practice research to address the material, spatial and bodily aspects of strategic work. Drawing on a video-ethnographic study of strategic episodes in a financial trading context, we develop a conceptual framework that elaborates on strategic work as socially accomplished within particular spaces that are constructed through different orchestrations of material, bodily and discursive resources. Building on the findings, our study identifies three types of strategic work, private work, collaborative work and negotiating work, that are accomplished within three distinct spaces that are constructed through multi-modal constellations of semiotic resources. We show that these spaces, and the activities performed within them,
are continuously shifting in ways that enable and constrain the particular outcomes of a strategic episode. Our framework contributes to the strategy-as-practice literature by identifying the importance of spaces in conducting strategic work, and providing insight into way that these spaces are constructed.