How Do Hybrid Organizations Learn from Collaboration? Knowledge Transfer in Social Enterprises

Abstract

Research on social enterprises is becoming popular in both practice and academia; it is referred to as a hybrid research context that integrates social and business missions, and develop different strategic alliances, product development, and knowledge management in a business context. In terms of the lack of knowledge research in the hybrid context, this study explores how social enterprises learn from cross-sectoral social partnership, using a knowledge-based view. By investigating 14 social enterprises in Taiwan, we adopt qualitative research with a grounded theory approach to identity the knowledge types (including business and social) transferred through such partnership. A theoretical framework is proposed to show how the different types of knowledge are transferred through such partnership. Furthermore, we reveal the specific features of social enterprises that facilitate/restrict both intrafirm and interfirm knowledge transfer. Our contributions lie in the connection of knowledge studies to the hybrid context, the disclosure of the differences in knowledge transfer in the business/social sectors and the generation of in-depth insights into how knowledge can be managed under the dual mission in hybrid organizations.