Social enterprises put the human being at the heart of their functioning (Defourny & Nyssens, 2006). The tension between social (or societal) objectives and economic imperatives (Alter, 2006) can be seen in various aspects of their management practices (Doherty & al., 2009) and particularly in their management of human resources (Laville & Glémain, 2010). But managing human resources, remains poorly developed and studied in social enterprises, even though it is recognized as an important domain of management (Borzaga & Solari, 2001; Comeau & Davister, 2008; Meyer, 2009). However, the social enterprise sector is currently undergoing important changes: increased complexity of legal and institutional frameworks; focus on impact evaluation; transformation of public funding schemes; increased competition, etc. (Dees & Elias, 1998; Mertens, 2010). Those evolutions question the functioning of social enterprises and strongly impact their human resource management (HRM) practices. A movement towards professionalization of social enterprises is observed (Hwang & Powell, 2009; Melnik, Petrella, & Richez-Battesti, 2012).
In this paper, we focus on the topic of HRM professionalization in social enterprises. Based on a defined understanding of HRM professionalization – a conceptual model composed of three dimensions: the HR tools, the HR function, and the HR philosophy – we apprehend HRM professionalization in social enterprises. But HRM cannot be considered in isolation from its environment, ranging from the organization’s internal characteristics to the wider external context surrounding the social enterprise. Moreover, how actors justify, sustain or restrain the evolution or non-evolution of HR practices have to be considered to catch a complete view of the problematic. To capture those subtleties, we rely on the contextualist framework of analysis developed by Pettigrew (1987).
We adopt an adapted methodology that combines, in a complementary way, quantitative (through a questionnaire) and qualitative (through case studies) modes for data collection. Indeed, a large quantitative survey was conducted by sending a questionnaire to the Belgian French-speaking social enterprises working with at least ten workers. In parallel, in-depth case studies were performed in four voluntary very different social enterprises, as the objective was to observe the diversity of the HR practices.
HRM professionalization experiences various paths in social enterprises and diverse evolutions on the three dimensions of HRM professionalization.
One of the main transversal observations is the fact that social enterprises seem to rely on a critical choice, a central feature, which impact the whole organization and its functioning. These critical choices are the internal concretization of the organization’s larger mission and strongly influence the paths of HRM professionalization and its different dimensions. In social enterprises, critical choices are the results of an evolving compromise between different logics. Those logics are combined so that the actors make sense of that specific combination. If new logics arise, the critical choice is challenged, leading to strong questionings also on HR issues. The internal characteristics of a social enterprise, especially its governance model and its main financing source, impact and are impacted by its critical choice. The critical choice then influences the paths and choices the social enterprise makes in terms of HRM.
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3. Governance, employment and human resource management
