Social entrepreneurship presents some unique characteristics in contrast to conventional entrepreneurship where “the provision of the product or service is not an end in itself, but an integral part of an intervention to achieve social objectives, thereby contributing to social change” (Mair, Battilana and Cardenas, 2012, p.353). Rather than to pursue economic benefit and to focus on value capture (Santos, 2012), social entrepreneurs are motivated by value creation and fulfillment of social mission.
Social enterprises, considered as hybrid organizations, represent an interesting perspective of study. Battilana and Lee (2014, p.397) define hybrid organizations “as the activities, structures, processes and meanings by which organizations make sense of and combine multiple organizational forms”. The concept of ‘hybridity’ represents the combination of different parts, such as multiple identities, organizational forms and institutional logics (Battilana and Lee, 2014; Jäger and Schröer, 2014). Internal and external tensions co-exist within a hybrid organization. They are considered “a new breed resulting from the mixing of two distinct organizational species (charities and for-profit businesses)” (Hockerts, 2015, p.1). Therefore, social enterprises, as complex hybrid organizations, may be characterize as the tensions between business and charity/social purposes (Battilana and Lee, 2014; Fritsch et al., 2014; Hockerts, 2015).
However, social enterprises may be a combination of more than those two purposes. Gordon (2015) identifies six traditions of social enterprises based on their purpose: mutual purpose (co-operation and mutuality), community purpose (community and voluntary association), altruistic purpose (charity and philanthropy), ethical purpose (alterity and radicalism), private market purpose (business and enterprise), public statist purpose (public social enterprise). The combination of multiple purposes within a single entity opens even greater number of tensions than the commercial/ social (business/charity) tensions.
When social enterprises are examined, the social mission is at the forefront of the organization. The concept of mission drift is proposed as a result of the pressures between the commercial/ social (business/charity) tensions. “Mission drift can be defined as a process of organizational change, where an organization diverges from its main purpose or mission“ (Cornforth, 2014, p.4).
The literature suggests negative aspects associated with mission drift (Cornforth, 2014; Ramus and Vaccaro, 2014). In addition to understanding the causes of mission drift, these authors refer to ways to address the mission drift. The language used refers to negative aspects that need to be corrected in a combat by using different strategies, such as governance mechanisms, compartmentalization and various integrative strategies (Cornforth, 2014). However, other expressions are also used such as dilution, evolution and unbalance, and need to be examined.
The objective of the conceptual paper is to challenge and discuss the changes in mission by hybrid organizations. By understanding the terminology used, such as mission drift, dilution, evolution, unbalance, it may help to identify the various reasons explaining the change by hybrid organizations and to see if we should speak about “drift”, “dilution”, “evolution” or something else. Our research questions are: when the mission of a hybrid organization changes, which expression are used to describe it, what they mean and what are the causes of the change.
The mission constructs are defined through analysis of existing conceptual literature (for example, strategic management and organizational theory), such as resource based view, resource dependency, stakeholder theory, contingency theory and literature on hybrid organizations. The identification of the change in mission depends on the timeline of examination. In any organizations, like for-profit organizations, mission change and evolve over the years. What are the causes of changes in mission? Which criteria could be used to examine the significance of a change? Should we see positive and negative aspects of mission changes? It may be a question of equilibrium between the different purposes.
REFERENCES:
Battilana, J., Lee, M. (2014). Advancing Research on Hybrids Organizing – Insights from the Study of Social Enterprises, The Academy of Management Annals, 8(1), 397-401.
Cornforth, C. (2014). Understanding and combating mission drift in social enterprises, Social Enterprise Journal, 10(1), 3-20.
Fritsch, B., Rossi, B., Hebb, T. (2014). An examination of the tension between business and social mission within social enterprise, Ottawa: Carleton University, Carleton Centre for Community Innovation, WP #13-07, February.
Gordon, M. (2015). A typology of Social Enterprise ‘Traditions’, ICSEM Working Papers, No. 18, Liège: The International Comparative Social Enterprise Models (ICSEM) Project.
Hockerts, K. (2015). How Hybrid Organizations Turn Antagonistic Assets into Complementarities, California Management Review, 57(3), 1-24.
Jäger U., and Schröer A. (2014).Integrated organizational identity: a definition of hybrid organization and a research agenda. Voluntas, 25 (5),1281–1306.
Mair, J., Battilana, J., Cardenas, J. (2012). Organizing for Society: A Typology of Social Entrepreneuring Models, Journal of Business Ethics, 111(3), 353-373.
Ramus, T., Vaccaro, A. (2014). Stakeholders Matter: How Social Enterprises Address Mission Drift, Journal of Business Ethics, DOI 10.1007/s10551-014-2353-y.
Santos, F.M. (2012). A Positive Theory of Social Entrepreneurship, Journal of Business Ethics, 111(3), 335-351.
2. Social innovation and social entrepreneurship
