Managing Social-Business Tensions: A Review and Research Agenda for Social Enterprises

Abstract

In a world filled with poverty, environmental degradation, and moral injustice, social enterprises offer a ray of hope. These organizations seek to achieve social missions through business ventures. Yet social missions and business ventures are associated with divergent goals, values, norms, and identities. Attending to them simultaneously creates tensions, competing demands, and ethical dilemmas. Effectively understanding social enterprises therefore depends on insight into the nature and management of these tensions. While existing research recognizes tensions between social missions and business ventures, we lack any systematic analysis. Our paper addresses this issue. We first categorize the types of tensions that arise between social missions and business ventures, emphasizing their prevalence and variety. We then explore how four different organizational theories offer insight into these tensions, and we develop an agenda for future research. We end by arguing that a focus on social-business tensions not only expands insight into social enterprises, but also provides an opportunity for research on social enterprises to inform traditional organizational theories. Taken together, our analysis of tensions in social enterprises integrates and seeks to energize research on this expanding phenomenon. Michael GoninUniversity of Zurich and University of Lausanne Marya L. BesharovCornell University ABSTRACT: In a world filled with poverty, environmental degradation, and moral injustice, social enterprises offer a ray of hope. These organizations seek to achieve social missions through business ventures. Yet social missions and business ventures are associated with divergent goals, values, norms, and identities. Attending to them simultaneously creates tensions, competing demands, and ethical dilemmas. Effectively understanding social enterprises therefore depends on insight into the nature and management of these tensions. While existing research recognizes tensions between social missions and business ventures, we lack any systematic analysis. Our paper addresses this issue. We first categorize the types of tensions that arise between social missions and business ventures, emphasizing their prevalence and variety. We then explore how four different organizational theories offer insight into these tensions, and we develop an agenda for future research. We end by arguing that a focus on social-business tensions not only expands insight into social enterprises, but also provides an opportunity for research on social enterprises to inform traditional organizational theories. Taken together, our analysis of tensions in social enterprises integrates and seeks to energize research on this expanding phenomenon.

Kicking Off Social Entrepreneurship: How A Sustainability Orientation Influences Crowdfunding Success

“…Evidence suggests that adopting a sustainability orientation may stimulate creativity (Gonin et al, 2013;Grant and Berry, 2011;Hahn et al, 2014;Lefebvre and Lefebvre, 2012). Hahn et al (2014) argue that a sustainability orientation forces managers to confront the tensions that exist between complex economic, social, and environmental considerations, and that confronting these tensions leads to more creativity.…”

Institutional complexity and paradox theory: Complementarities of competing demands

“…Yet effectively integrating these competing demands is challenging. Together, institutional theory and paradox theory can critically contribute to debates on these issues, particularly given the fundamental role of tensions and paradoxes in shaping their emergence and evolution (Jay, 2013;Smith et al, 2012;Gonin et al, 2013;Margolis and Walsh, 2003;Hahn et al, 2014). Taken together, these two theories can investigate both the exogenous and endogenous factors that surface competing demands, and explore organizational and individual approaches for accommodating competing demands simultaneously.…”

The hybrid identity of micro enterprises

“…More generally, the quest for better understanding of the dynamics of multiple purpose organizations and the challenges involved in reconciling potentially contradictory organizational elements has been subject to research under the label of hybrid organizing of social enterprises, those that seek to achieve social missions though business ventures. The abundant research has already been summarized and subject to theoretical development (Gonin et al, 2013;Battilana and Lee, 2014;Dufays and Huybrechts, 2016) and extension to public and non-profit organizations (Skelcher and Smith, 2014).…”