Hybrid organisations exhibit high degree of innovativeness, but also instability due to the conflicting institutional logics underpinning their activities. We enrich the discussion on how to reconcile conflicting logics in hybrid organisations using the analogy with music theory. In particular, we get inspiration from a technique used to modulate conflicting harmonies by means of the notes they have in common (common-notes) to derive ideas on how to compose conflicting logics by means of the practices they have in common. We illustrate these ideas in the specific case of social enterprises, showing that practices able to 'unblock' a marginalised individual's value creation capabilities can be considered common-note practices allowing the social enterprise to fruitfully and sustainably combine commercial and social welfare logics.
The empowerment of marginalized individuals implies solutions both affecting the conditions which impede self-determination and stimulating the individuals to take choices. In Italy, for instance, social enterprises working with convicts have to deal with a repressive context and a lack of individual agency mind-set. Our paper presents the results of a case study of Made In Carcere, an social enterprise actives in Lecce which employs convicted women to produce and sell products on the market. We examine how the empowerment of convicts passes through the creation of a safe space and processes able to make a bridge with the outside reality. Our paper demonstrates that the market driven dimension of social enterprise is critical to make the bridging effective in producing convicts empowerment, other than make the organization economic sustainable.
Communities, intended as self-organized informal groups, are much less structured than nonprofit organizations typically considered by Cross-Sector Social Partnership (CSSP) studies. Building on the empirical investigation of a real CSSP, this article offers an in-depth analysis of the ambivalent dynamics implied by partnership with such communities. Our findings indicate that the mechanisms that create room for innovative collaboration opportunities made available by these communities (such as co-innovation, pricing co-determination, co-financing, and democratic decision making) can also, over time, adversely affect the partnership and cause it to permanently lose its shared purpose. In our conclusion, we provide potential remedies for the latter scenario and discuss how they may enrich CSSP literature.
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