Summary articles Hybrid Organisations
Week 1 1
Making Hybrids Work: Aligning business models and organisational design of social enterprises -
Santos, et al. 1
The New Heretics: Hybrid organisations and the challenges they present to corporate
sustainability - Haigh & Hoffman 4
Organisations, social problems and system change: invigorating the third mandate of
organisational research - Mair & Seelos 6
Moving beyond fragmented traditions: towards an integrated view of organising for sustainable
development - Metz, Angeli & Raab 8
Week 2 9
The Macro-Institutional Social Enterprise Framework: Introduction and theoretical underpinnings
- Kerlin 9
An updated quantitative analysis of Kerlin’s macro-institutional social enterprise framework -
Coskun, Monroe-White, Kerlin 12
The welfare state and social entrepreneurship: insights from a multilevel study of European
regions - Folmer, Rebmann, Stephan 14
Week 3 16
Social capital as a driver of social entrepreneurship - Hidalgo, Monticelli, Bortolaso 16
Social enterprise networks and social capital: A case study in Scotland/UK - Sacchetti, Campbell 18
Social Entrepreneurship & Networks - Brady & Haugh 21
Week 4 23
Impact investing and new social funding: history, actors and promise 23
EPVA - A practical guide to measuring and managing impact 27
On the transformation of children at-risk into an investment proposition: A study of social impact
bonds as an inti-market device - Neyland (2017) 29
Week 5 30
Managing interrelated tensions in headquarters-subsidiary relationships: The case of a
multinational hybrid organisation - Ambos, Fuchs and Zimmerman 30
From caring entrepreneur to caring enterprise: addressing the ethical challenges of scaling up
social enterprises - Andre & Pache 31
Successful scaling in social franchising: the case of Impact Hub - Guidici et al. 33
Week 6 35
Introduction: Strategic human resource management in the 21st century - Boselie, chapter 1 35
Strategic human resource management and context - Boselie, chapter 2 37
Human Resource Management and Performance: adding value through people - Boselie (ch.3)39
Does intrinsic motivation fuel prosocial fire? Motivational synergy in predicting persistence,
performance and productivity - Grant, 2008 41
Decision-making in social enterprises - Ohana et al, 2013) 42
Using human resource management tools to support social enterprise - Royce (2007) 43
Volunteer role mastery and commitment: can HRM make a difference? - Saksida, et al. (2017) 44
,Week 1
Making Hybrids Work: Aligning business models and organisational design of social enterprises -
Santos, et al.
Aim of the chapter Deepening understanding of the challenges of hybridity and informing the
management of these organisations.
Why is it important In order to develop new business initiatives, corporate leaders need to understand
to investigate this? the nature and management of hybrid organisations.
Important Businesses are asked to address a stronger set of societal expectations from
concepts/ governments, activist groups, consumers or their employees. Business leaders need
definitions to weigh the value capture for the company against value creation for society.
→ Social business hybrids (social enterprises): organisations that run commercial
operations with the goal of addressing a societal problem, thus adopting a social or
environmental mission. → Combining financial and societal value.
The central challenge of social business hybrids is to align the activities that generate
profit with the activities that generate impact.
- Profit = the value captured by the organisation for its owners
- Impact = the value created by the organisation for society in the achievement
of its mission, can include environmental benefits and social gains
- Business model = the combination of resources and activities that allow and
organisation to create, deliver and capture value
Commercial models can be highly efficient in solving societal problems, due to the
discipline of the market in aligning business actions with client value, as well as the
dynamics of competition that promote increased efficiency of operations and
continuous innovation in the delivery of products and services. But the market
outcomes can be perceived as unfair, as the distribution of resources determines the
welfare of different segments of the population.
Social enterprises have distinctive advantages over commercial firms. Dimensions:
1. Dimension 1: contingent value spillover
Value spillover: the increases or decreases in value to economic agents
outside a specific transaction. Social business hybrids tend to operate in
domains that exhibit strong potential value spillovers.
- Value spillover can be an automatic result of commercial activities
- The value spillovers could also be contingent on the development of
additional interventions because they are not a direct outcome of
commercial activities → providing additional interventions (e.g.
training, mentoring) is required for the generation of societal impact
2. Dimension 2: transaction obstacles and the degree of overlap between
clients and beneficiaries
Commercial models rely on customers being able to engage in transactions
and are willing to pay a certain price. However, in the case of the excluded or
disadvantaged population, they have difficulty engaging because they are
unable to pay, unable to access or do not value it enough to purchase it.
Social hybrids can develop business models to allow these transactions to
happen - the nature depends on specific transaction obstacle:
- Inability to pay: a potential solution is the re-design of the production
value chain with a focus on target costing (by use of
technology/automising labour or specialised role divisions that
leverages abundant resources)
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, - Difficulty of access: models of micro-franchises allow reaching
potential customers in cost-efficient manner
- Unwillingness to pay (due to value perception mismatch): potential
clients would gain from the offering, but do not know about it or do
not recognise its value. Combining products people want with
products they need can lead to a better alignment of customer
choice with societal impact.
By implementing these types of business model innovations, social business hybrids
fulfil the social mission while transacting with their target beneficiaries as customers.
Typology of social business hybrids
The two key dimensions of level of contingent value spillovers and degree of overlap
between clients and beneficiaries are the basis for classifying social business hybrids.
1. Market hybrid: organisations designed in a way that beneficiaries are clients
that pay for a product/service for which the value spillovers happen
automatically without requiring additional interventions
- Close to pure commercial models with the difference that the
organisation adopts a social mission
- Access to products/services generates automatic value spillovers in
terms of health or economic benefits for the clients → the more products
sold, the more societal impact is created
- Unlikely to experience mission drift; the focus is on commercial
performance and it simultaneously enhances social performance
2. Blending hybrid: organisations that serve paying clients who are also the
beneficiaries of their societal mission
- Achieving desired societal impact requires blending commercial
offerings with additional interventions (such as training) upon which
positive societal spillovers are contingent
- Includes microfinance, education and social inclusion organisation that
require changes in behavior of clients for impact to happen
- Higher risk of mission drift; additional activities required to generate
impact do not contribute to generating revenues and thus have a
negative impact on profits, facing the risk of being neglected
3. Bridging hybrid: attend to clients and beneficiaries who are from different
groups and must bridge the needs and resources of both constituencies
- Challenge to integrate clients and beneficiaries in the same intervention
- Risk of mission drift is significant; due to the danger of prioritising needs
of commercial clients over beneficiaries due to resource dependence
patterns
4. Coupling hybrid: organisations have clients and beneficiaries that are
different, but most value spillovers do not happen automatically, requiring
distinct social interventions alongside commercial operations
- Most complex to manage; they need to serve two types of different
constituencies & their social impact is dependent on additional
interventions that are not included in provision of commercial activity
- Risk of mission drift is high; they may be tempted to prioritise clients
over beneficiaries, as well as discard or reduce the focus on additional
interventions that consume resources and do not contribute
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, Conclusions/ Companies that are able to more closely align profit and impact will strengthen their
answers long-term sustainability and survival, as well as the sustainability of the societal
context and communities on which they depend. The growing importance of hybrid
organisations also means that in areas where the potential for societal value creation
is important, commercial companies are at risk of being placed in competition with
social mission organisations that operate commercial models.
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