The Institutional and Technical Structuring of Nonprofit Ventures: Case Study of a U.S. Hybrid Organization Caught Between Two Fields

Abstract

This paper engages the concept of the organizational field to explore the status of a growing set of organizations referred to as social enterprises, nonprofit ventures, and social purpose businesses. The argument is developed through an ethnographic case study of a nonprofit hybrid organization (in the United States) that is training welfare recipients in their own in-house businesses. First, this paper provides an overview of the commercial trends in the nonprofit sector and the rise of social purpose enterprises. Then, employing key concepts from neo-institutional theory, the author proposes framing nonprofit-business hybrids as organizations positioned in two different organizational fields—each necessitating different internal organizational technologies—to elucidate the structural tensions that can emerge inside these new hybrid models. Internal organizational tensions identified in the case study are highlighted. Finally, the proposed use of organizational field theory developed from the case analysis is discussed in terms of social enterprise more generally.