Social Enterprises as Hybrid Organizations: A Review and Research Agenda

Abstract

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.

Challenging the Degeneration Thesis: the Role of Democracy in Worker Cooperatives?

“…This poses risks of degeneration (Cornforth, 1995; see also Diamantopoulos, 2012;Chen, Lune and Queen, 2013;Doherty, Haugh and Lyon, 2014) that are heightened by an economic context which promotes managerialism and "market-based solutions to social problems" (Eikenberry, 2009: 585). The degeneration thesis claims that worker cooperatives will inevitably succumb to external forces and the impact of internal characteristics (such as the development of informal hierarchies based on personality traits or length of member involvement) "to adopt the same organisational forms and priorities as capitalist business in order to survive" (Cornforth, 1995: 1).…”

Directions for Social Enterprise from an Efficiency Perspective

“…Moreover, Doherty et al [13] underlined two characteristics of social enterprises-commercial activities to generate revenue and the pursuit of social goals. As the above two studies described, it is worth noting that social enterprise pursues both social value and the economic mission.…”

The impact of a changing financial climate on a UK local charitable sector: voices from the front line

“…These demographic, financial and institutional pressures collectively increase the importance of winning public contracts for charitable organizations to survive. The hybridity of combining financial sustainability and social purpose as a defining characteristic (Doherty et al, 2014) suggests charities would prosper in this new environment. In a free market, however, it is the most efficient organizations that prosper.…”