Growing up from In-Betweeners: Alternatives to Hybridity in Social Entrepreneurship Research

Manfred Lehner Othmar () and Weber Christiana
Additional contact information
Manfred Lehner Othmar: University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Weber Christiana: Institut für Unternehmensführung und Organisation, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Hannover, Germany

Entrepreneurship Research Journal, 2020, vol. 10, issue 3, 13

Abstract: Social ventures (SVs) based on social entrepreneurship are often labeled in the literature as hybrids because of their inherent different institutional logics between social and commercial thinking. As one potential consequence, it is further argued that these not-yet institutionalized organizational forms lack legitimacy. In this conceptual paper, we articulate our concerns with this trend in social entrepreneurship research. We propose configuration theory as an alternative approach to move forward and argue that from a configurational lens such SVs can be identified as distinct, yet coherent configurations driven by their intrinsic and idiosyncratic value bundles and related value creation goals. We demonstrate how this helps overcome the raised concerns and contribute to the literature on social entrepreneurship and configuration theory.

Keywords: social entrepreneurship; configuration theory; organization; blended value; hybridity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/erj-2018-0099 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:erjour:v:10:y:2020:i:3:p:13:n:3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/erj/html

DOI: 10.1515/erj-2018-0099

Access Statistics for this article

Entrepreneurship Research Journal is currently edited by Chandra S. Mishra and Ramona K. Zachary

More articles in Entrepreneurship Research Journal from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().