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Abstract
Social enterprises (SE) have been defined as the ideal type of hybrid organizations that have to respond to conflicting logics in their quest to create social impact through their commercial activity. New institutional contexts shaped by new legal entities (such as the benefit corporation) or third-party standards (such as certified B-Corp) have lead to the development of new "born-hybrid" logic that deal with those tensions differently. Author reviews literature on hybrid organizations and describe logics integrating mechanisms. Using empirical evidence from a case study author generates a set of propositions that responds to the call for a better understanding of critical management issues in SE-hybrid organizations.
September 25th 2015
Note to Reviewers: The paper main's purpose is to advance research in social enterprises as hybrid organizations in general, and explore an emerging subtheme, the benefit corporations in particular. The author has been collecting informal empirical evidence from certified B-Corps' founders and aims to write a solid case study with USASBE peers' guidance. Thanks for your time and consideration.
Introduction
Hybrid organizations can be defined as organizations that combine aspects of multiple organizational forms and blends together logics previously seen as incompatible (Battilana & Lee, 2014). Within this broad context of hybrid organizations, I specifically focus on social enterprises (SE) defined as "an ideal type of hybrid organization" by these same authors (p. 399).
Social entrepreneurship refers to the process of creating social value through market-based means (Austin, Stevenson, & Wei- Skillern, 2006; Mair & Marti, 2006). Social enterprises (SE), i.e. organizations engaged in social entrepreneurship, differ from traditional non-profits organizations (NPO) on the means to achieve their goals, and from profits-maximization business (PMB) with peripheral CSR activities in the centrality of their social mission. SE merges a commercial logic driven by business principles with the social logic driven by their social mission. These logics can get into conflicts that create tensions and make the organizations to favor one against the other. Authors use the term "mission drift" to describe the phenomena by which some hybrid organizations, despite being socially driven end up taking decisions in favor of the commercial logic to facilitate organizational survival (Foster & Bradach, 2005).
Scholars have analyzed the mechanisms used by hybrid organizations to integrate these competing logics...