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Bowing Before Dual Gods: Sustaining Social Mission and Business Identities in a Social Enterprise

MaryaBesharov_2008

Marya Besharov, Cornell University

Description

Semester:

  • Fall 2014

Speakers:

Marya Besharov, Department of Organizational Behavior, Cornell University

Lecture Time:

Fri, November 7, 2014 @ 1:30 pm to 3:00 pm

Lecture Location:

Room R1240, Ross School of Business

Speaker Webpage(s):

https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/directory/mlb363/

Introduced By:

Introduced by Management & Organizations PhD student Lindsey Cameron

Abstract

The presence of social-business hybrid organizations has increased dramatically in recent years, supported by new legal forms and growing numbers of “impact investors” looking for social not just financial returns. These hybrids present a theoretical and practical puzzle. Some organizations experience severe internal conflict or mission drift and ultimately fail to uphold their dual missions, yet others survive and thrive. Our study examines how hybrids sustain their dual missions over time, particularly when structural separation between the two missions is not a viable option. To do so, we collected ten years of in-depth qualitative data from Digital Divide Data, a social enterprise that seeks to alleviate poverty by training and employing disadvantaged people in an information-technology outsourcing business. We find that DDD’s dual social and business missions created paradoxical identity commitments – contradictory yet interrelated beliefs about “who we are” and “what we do” as an organization – and raised ongoing tensions between being a successful commercial business and fulfilling their social mission. To manage these tensions, DDD’s leaders developed low-cost practices such as feasibility studies, pilot programs, and the use of volunteer labor. Because they lowered cognitive and resource commitments to any particular course of action, these practices enabled leaders to recognize instances in which either social or business identity commitments were being ignored and to experiment with new practices that would uphold both. We use these findings to develop a model of how flexible enactment – in this case, flexibility in how social and business identities are carried out by members in on-going work activities – enables organizations to sustain commitments to paradoxical identities over time. While grounded in a study of a social enterprise, our model has implications for a wide range of organizations that pursue competing demands, including universities, hospitals, and other nonprofits, as well as family businesses, multi-national corporations, and other for-profit firms.

Recording & Additional Notes

No additional notes available.