From Balancing Missions to Mission Drift: The Role of the Institutional Context, Spaces, and Compartmentalization in the Scaling of Social Enterprises

Abstract

In this article, we explain the mechanisms that allow social enterprises to balance their missions, and the risk of mission drift as organizations grow. We empirically explore Incubator-BUS (I-BUS), a student organization within a private Brazilian university, which sought to incubate cooperatives for vulnerable groups. Although initially successful in balancing its missions, I-BUS then failed. We show how scaling-up can complicate the balancing of different missions within the same organization. We propose that, to balance their missions, social enterprises—especially recently formed and democratically managed enterprises—need not only “spaces of negotiation,” as suggested in the literature, but also “herding spaces” that connect an organization to its institutional context. We indicate why herding spaces are critical, but then show how scaling-up can result in organizational “compartmentalization” that undermines them.

Understanding the Diverse Scaling Strategies of Social Enterprises as Hybrid Organizations: The Case of Renewable Energy Cooperatives

“…The observations thus highlight how collective dynamics, even at the local level, may be one complementary response to the organization-level tensions and contradictions inherent in hybridity (Battilana et al, 2015; Mitzinneck & Besharov, 2019). Balancing different types of positioning and scaling modes may thus enable diverse hybrid organizations in a field to collectively maintain hybridity and avoid mission drift (Hudon & Sandberg, 2013; Ometto et al, 2019).…”

“…Finally, reversing the relationship between mission and scaling strategies, future studies could examine how the organizational mission evolves together with the scaling strategy (André & Pache, 2016; Kannothra et al, 2018). In particular, for the social enterprises scaling up quickly such as Ecopower, how far can one specific goal or logic be prioritized throughout the scaling process without losing sight on the other constitutive elements of hybridity, that is, without witnessing mission drift (Battilana & Dorado, 2010; Battilana & Lee, 2014; Ometto et al, 2019)? We hope that this article will encourage future research bringing further elements of answers to these fascinating questions.…”

“…So far, the literature on social enterprises as hybrid organizations has largely focused on how these organizations internally deal with the challenges of balancing competing logics and overcoming the potential tensions between them (Battilana & Dorado, 2010; Battilana, Sengul, Pache, & Model, 2015). There is, however, a dearth of research that considers the interactions between hybridity and scaling (Ometto, Gegenhuber, Winter, & Greenwood, 2019). Scaling strategies of social enterprises as hybrid organizations have mainly been examined through descriptions and typologies (Battilana & Lee, 2014; Kannothra, Manning, & Haigh, 2018; Lyon & Fernandez, 2012; Vickers & Lyon, 2014).…”

Social Innovation: Integrating Micro, Meso, and Macro Level Insights From Institutional Theory

“…Finally, in the paper by Ometto, Gegenhuber, Winter, and Greenwood (2019), interactions, emotions, reflexivity, and disembedding again emerge as influential. The authors identify the emergence of herding spaces , inhabited by the members of a social enterprise, the I-BUS incubator.…”

“…Several of the papers included in this special issue illuminate the role of interactive spaces, negotiation, co-creation, and embedding in social innovation. The notion of “interactive spaces” is explicit in the paper by Ometto and colleagues (2019). The authors highlight the importance of two types of “interactive spaces.” Their study showed that to gain permanency for its balancing of social and commercial goals, a social enterprise not only needs “spaces of negotiation” that offer the opportunity of direct interaction to create shared understanding and to negotiate a common stance (and that are regularly discussed in the social innovation literature, see Battilana, Sengul, Pache, & Model, 2015).…”