Social Entrepreneurship as an INGO: Exploring the Challenges of Innovation and Hybridisation

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The emergence of entrepreneurship as an activity which addresses enduring social or environmental challenges has been a source of innovation, promise and insight for practitioners and scholars alike. While researchers have contributed to understandings of social entrepreneurship and social enterprise in many contexts, it is a curious anomaly of social entrepreneurship scholarship that so little consideration has been given to its application within international humanitarian non-government organizations (INGOs) and aid agencies. The lack of research is notable because these development organizations have tremendous potential to realize the benefits of social entrepreneurship due to their capability and capacity that has been developed through the provision of community and economic development programs in the world’s most vulnerable communities. We therefore lack relevant theory to explain and guide action in this sector. As INGOs pursue or facilitate social entrepreneurship to increase their impact and/or make their activities more financially sustainable, they are forced to contend with the competing logics (social and commercial) of this activity itself, but also with the ways in which this conflicts with their own dominant development (social) logic. These logics are based on the institutional parameters of the category in which the organization operates, i.e., private, public or non-profit sector (Doherty et al., 2014). Billis (2010) provides us with the following organizational templates to explicate category logics (Table 20.1). This is a useful framework for illustrating not only how social entrepreneurs and social enterprises combine competing logics but how this can be problematic in terms of governance and resourcing (cf. Doherty et al., 2014; Newth and Woods, 2014). International development agencies are being forced to respond to many geopolitical, economic and technological environment changes. The threats and opportunities these changes create will likely necessitate a degree of hybridization. Hybrid organizations are those that combine institutional logics (Battilana and Dorado, 2010; Doherty et al., 2014; Pache and Santos, 2013). Examples of such organizations include social enterprises which combine commercial and social logics (Doherty et al., 2014); microfinance organizations which combinedevelopment and banking logics (Battilana et al., 2015), public-private partnerships which combine state, market and civil society logics (Jay, 2013), and research centers and education institutions which combine scientific or academic with market logics (cf. Pache and Santos, 2013). These organizations also bridge, or blur, institutional fields (Tracey et al., 2011). Institutional logics are understood to be the “taken for granted social prescriptions that represent shared understandings of what constitutes legitimate goals and how they may be pursued” (Battilana and Dorado, 2010, 1420). Hybrid organization research in social entrepreneurship is particularly concerned with organizations that combine logics that would otherwise be considered incompatible. This chapter uses Shepherd and Patzelt (2011) as an organizing framework to illustrate the opportunities that social entrepreneurship offers INGOs, all of which are relevant to the organization under examination here. The points within an INGO that are challenged by the pursuit of social entrepreneurship are then identified and discussed in terms of how changes at these points force, or require, hybridity. This discussion seeks to contribute to the literature around hybridization in social entrepreneurship and enterprise by drawing out the specific aspects of a particular non-profit that are challenged by the hybrid logic of social entrepreneurship strategies and initiatives. Drawing on Newth and Woods’ (2014) development of Schumpeter’s (1934) notion of resistance as it applies to social entrepreneurship and institutional theory, the micro-level institutional bases for tension and resistance to social entrepreneurship are considered via an in-depth case study. This chapter’s empirical application of Shepherd and Patzelt’s (2011) framework and its combination with institutional theory, specifically institutional logics, contributes to social and sustainable entrepreneurship theory. It also provides specific insight into the application of this theory in the international development sector. This represents an initial step in addressing the lack of research into social entrepreneurship in this sector in general, and towards building theory which explains and informs the contextual bases thatTable 20.1 Organizational templatesInstitutional guideGovernorship Owners Business model/ revenuePrivate Market forces Share of ownershipShareholders SalesPublic Public benefit and collective choiceElected representativesCitizens and stateTaxationNon-profit Social and environmental goalsElected representatives or appointed trusteesMembers Donations, membership fees and legaciesenable and constrain entrepreneurial action in established development organizations.