Mission and Markets? Organizational Hybridity in Social Ventures

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to understand the antecedents, processes, and consequences of institutional hybridity in entrepreneurship and organizations, with a specific focus on phenomena at the interface of business organization and social welfare concerns. While recent research has surfaced organizational mechanisms and processes unique to new hybrid social ventures that combine aspects of business and charity, research to date has not addressed the antecedents of this institutional hybridity, nor its consequences for the organizational viability of these ventures. With respect to large corporations, research focused on corporate social responsibility has flourished, but takes a relatively narrow view of corporations' influence of social welfare in terms of business outputs. To address these gaps, this dissertation examines two separate phenomena at the interface of business organization and social welfare concerns. Chapter 2, "How the Zebra Got its Stripes: Multiple Imprinting of Entrepreneurs and Hybrid Social Ventures," explores the role of individual imprinting in social venture founders' propensity to incorporate aspects of the business form, thus creating a hybrid. Chapter 3, "Mission and Markets? The Viability of Hybrid Social Ventures," also uses the setting of hybrid social ventures to investigate how combining multiple organizational forms influences a range of organizational outcomes considered critical to organizational viability. Finally, Chapter 4, "Large Corporations, Community Social Capital and Social Welfare: Evidence from Organized Community Philanthropy," shifts focus to an examination of how large corporations indirectly affect community social capital, and thereby shape community-level processes such as corporate philanthropy that support social welfare.