There is a growing consensus that the adoption of performance measurement tools are of particular interest for social enterprises in order to support internal decision-making and to answer the demands of accountability toward their stakeholders. As a result, different methodologies to assess the non-financial performance of social enterprises are developed by academics and practitioners. Many of these methodologies are on the one hand discussions of general guidelines or, on the other hand, very case specific. As such, these methodologies do not offer a functional tool for a broad range of social enterprises. The goal of this article is to fill this gap by developing an instrument suitable for the internal assessment and the external reporting of the non-financial performance of a diverse group of social enterprises. To reach this goal, we used qualitative (focus groups and a Delphi panel) and quantitative research methods (exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis), involving multiple actors in the field of social entrepreneurship. Focusing on five dimensions of organizational performance (economic, environmental, community, human and governance performance), we offer a set of indicators and an assessment tool for social enterprises.

Following the growing interest in sustainability and ethics, organizations are increasingly attentive to accountability toward stakeholders. Stakeholder representation, obtained by appointing board members representing different stakeholder groups, is suggested to be a good ethical practice. However, such representation may also have nefarious implications for board functioning. Particularly, it may result in strong faultline emergence, subsequently mitigating board performance. Our study aims at understanding the process through which faultlines affect board performance, and particularly the board service role through which the board is involved in providing counsel and strategic decision-making. We study the relationship between faultlines and board service performance in the particularly relevant context of social enterprises. We find that faultline strength is negatively related to board service performance and that this relationship is mediated by board task conflict. Furthermore, our study reveals the importance of clear and shared organizational goals in attenuating the negative effects of faultlines.

We develop a new perspective on capital structure differences between for-profit social and commercial enterprises by combining imprinting and social entrepreneurship theory. Using a longitudinal matched sample, we find that for-profit social enterprises have 40% to 13% lower leverage and up to four times greater leverage stability over time than commercial enterprises. Our results suggest that these differences in capital structure derive from the process of prosocial organizing, which goes beyond the primary focus on financial preferences. Thus, for-profit social enterprises-and similar hybrid organizations, such as B corporations-may require theories adjusted to their context.

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Environmental and social challenges require new sustainable business models, like sharing platforms. However, sharing platforms differ widely in their contribution to a more sustainable society. Whereas idealistic sharing platforms have dominant social goals, other sharing platforms are, or became, commercial. We explore the attractiveness of the typical organizational characteristics of idealistic sharing platforms in the fashion industry context, an industry with negative environmental and social impacts. Based on a literature review and exploratory focus groups, we conduct an online survey using conjoint analysis, completed by 1,512 respondents. Our results reveal that potential users prefer clothes sharing platforms to be small, to not partner with large clothing retailers, to have the possibility to participate in decision‐making, but to not require shareholding.

Although the sharing economy is rapidly growing, it is still in its infancy. One of the key challenges is successfully expanding the number of users joining the sharing economy. Our research empirically assesses which organizational form is most successful in attracting new consumers to the sharing organizations that are co-owned by their users. The structure and scope of these sharing communities may differ substantially: while closed sharing communities are neighborhood based, open sharing communities establish broad communities without geographical boundaries. Building on social capital theory, we find that open sharing communities are more attractive than closed sharing communities because they foster trust and alleviate perceived scarcity risk. Yet, important boundary conditions exist. While a social and environmental orientation increases the likelihood to join open sharing communities, this is not the case for closed sharing organizations. These results highlight the value of examining distinct organizational forms of sharing organizations.

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Given the environmental challenges facing organizations, there is an increasing interest in how to stimulate the green behavior of employees. This study focuses on how leaders foster green advocacy, a specific category of green behavior that refers to influencing others to demonstrate green behavior by sharing environmental knowledge and discussing environmental issues. Our study, using a sample of 363 employees of a Belgian grocery retail company, provides valuable insights on the complex role of leaders in stimulating green advocacy. The results reveal that environmentally‐specific transformational leadership is positively related to employees' green advocacy. Our results further provide insights into the underlying mechanisms explaining this relationship, as we find that environmentally‐specific transformational leadership is indirectly related to employees' green advocacy through environmental CSR and organizational environmental support. Finally, leadership integrity is found to positively moderate the direct as well as the indirect relationship between environmentally‐specific transformational leadership and green advocacy.