Measuring the Integration of Social and Environmental Missions in Hybrid Organizations
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Measuring the Integration of Social and Environmental Missions in Hybrid Organizations Edward N. Gamble1 · Simon C. Parker2,3 · Peter W. Moroz4 Received: 26 February 2018 / Accepted: 13 March 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract This paper introduces a new typology and associated measure of social and environmental mission integration (SEMI) by conceptually framing a feature of hybrid organizations—the degree of integration of their revenue model and social–environmental mission. The SEMI measure is illustrated using a hand-collected sample of 256 North American Certified B Corporations. We explore the heterogeneity of SEMI scores by identifying external-facing correlates and demonstrate noncongruence with Certified B Corporation’s audit results. Overall, our findings advance existing knowledge of these hybrid organizations and how they balance their social–environmental missions with their economic objectives. Keywords B Corps · Business models · Hybrid organizations · Social and environmental index · Typology · Voluntary audits Abbreviations B Corp Certified B corporation S&E Social and environmental SEMI Social–environmental mission integration
Introduction Hybrid organizations combine activities, structures, processes, meanings, and organizational forms from different fields (Battilana and Lee 2014; Jay 2013) and are thus guided by multiple institutional logics (e.g., state, professional, community, or religious logics) (Thornton et al. 2012). They represent a large and diverse constituency of * Edward N. Gamble [email protected] Simon C. Parker [email protected] Peter W. Moroz [email protected] 1
Jake Jabs College of Business & Entrepreneurship, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, USA
2
Ivey School of Business, Western University, London, ON, Canada
3
University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK
4
Hill/Levene School of Business, Regina, SK, Canada
contexts and forms—public, non-profit, private, and other emerging forms—that engage in a wide range of economic and non-economic missions (Austin et al. 2006; Battilana and Lee 2014). For example, hybrid organizations can range from innovative start-ups that seek to address the grand challenges of society, to larger ventures that simply wish to provide a better environment for their workers, contribute to their communities, or lessen their environmental footprint (Doherty et al. 2014). Yet hybrid organizations are often faced with multiple and conflicting tensions arising from their organizational form (Davies and Doherty 2018; Doherty et al. 2014; Ebrahim et al. 2014; Haigh et al. 2015; McMullen and Warnick 2016). One important tension facing some hybrids is the integration of social and environmental (S&E) missions with commercial missions (Emerson 2003; Santos et al. 2015). Many hybrid organizations face a challenge in choosing business models that tradeoff S&E objectives with profits for their owners. This challenge can be experienced differently in hybrids based on the degree to which their S&E missions are int
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