New Insights on Social Entrepreneurship and Hybridity from the SEFORΪS Project

Abstract

Management and organizational researchers (George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi, & Tihanyi, 2016 for a review) have taken a strong interest in ‘grand societal challenges’ – that is, persistent social issues that often concern marginalized actors in society. Social enterprises are organizations that typically work to address such persistent societal issues from social exclusion, poverty to environmental degradation through engaging in market-based activities (Mair & Marti, 2006). Yet social enterprises also encounter challenges through being hybrids and anchored both in social welfare and economic logics (Battilana & Lee, 2014). The papers in this symposium interrogate hybridity in organizing, its outcomes and antecedents including those lying with the individual founding, managing and leading a social enterprise as well as those relating to organizational strategies and contexts. Specifically, they look at the questions such as (i) How different motives of nascent social entrepreneurs affect success? (ii) Are all the social entrepreneurs ‘change-makers’ or are there other distinct value profiles that exemplify social enterprise managers? (iii) What explains differences in beneficiary/customer orientation and governance practices among social enterprises, and when and why do these differences matter to organizational outcomes? and (iv) What drives success in cross-sector partnerships in which social enterprises are involved? To answer these questions, the papers rely on novel experimental, large-scale, cross- country comparable survey and granular case-study evidence on social enterprises. Do Nascent Social Entrepreneurs Respond to Rewards? Motivations in a Grant Competition Presenter: Ina Ganguli; Harvard U. Presenter: Marieke Huysentruyt; HEC Paris Presenter: Chloé Le Coq; Stockholm School of Economics-SITE The Value of Values in Understanding the Distinctiveness and Heterogeneity of Social Enterprises Presenter: Ute Stephan; Aston Business School Presenter: Johanna Mair; Hertie School of Governance Presenter: Marieke Huysentruyt; HEC Paris Performance of Social Enterprises: A Configurational Analysis of Customer/Beneficiary Orientation Presenter: Tomislav Rimac; ESCI-Pompeu Fabra U. Unpacking Hybridity: Organizational and Institutional Antecedents of Social Enterprise Governance Presenter: Johanna Mair; Hertie School of Governance Presenter: Nikolas Rathert; Hertie School of Governance Cross-sector Cooperation Through a Serlean Lens: The Case of Swedish Social Enterprises Presenter: Bogdan Prokopovych; U. of Massachusetts, Amherst Presenter: Clara My Lernborg; Stockholm School of Economics Presenter: Davis Plotnieks; SITE, Stockholm School of Economics