Doing Good Whilst Making Profit: A Contingency Perspective on Dual Objectives

Abstract

This study focuses on social entrepreneurship ventures and how they balance economic and social objectives. Scholars have suggested that social entrepreneurship ventures can either hybridize elements related to both objectives, thereby crafting new practices and behaviour, or can adopt intact practices and behaviour. However, the existing literature has not taken the heterogeneity of the field into account and falls short in explaining why social ventures use different approaches to balance these goals. In this paper we look at the contingencies that determine differences in the way social ventures deal with dual objectives. Based on an inductive study of 11 cases, we develop a framework and typology and find that two contingencies impact the approach social ventures use to deal with dual objectives: (1) the hierarchical order of economic and social objectives and (2) the way in which their customers and beneficiaries are organized. We find that when customers and beneficiaries are the same, social ventures integrate dual objectives on the practice level, thereby crafting new behavior, practices and forms. Instead, when customers are different from the beneficiaries, the ventures have the ability to adopt intact practices, behavior and forms. With this study, we add to the existing literature by allowing for a more fine-grained understanding of the organizational approaches that enable social and economic objectives to co-exist.