From Black and White to Yin and Yang: Exploring the Management of Tensions in Social Enterprises

Rahim Sarhangi, Ali Naghi Mashayekhi and Ebrahim Souzanchi Kashani

Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 2024, vol. 15, issue 2, 605-629

Abstract: Social enterprises are organisations comprised of two conflicting logics: social and commercial. However, simultaneous commitment to both logics often leads to tensions, making social enterprises fragile organisations at the risk of mission drift. The extant literature on hybridity highlights two important overall strategies – integration and differentiation - for managing tensions. However, integration or differentiation alone can create additional problems, which is especially true in the case of differentiation, creating a situation comparable to black and white, with a salient faultline and heated conflicts. In this inductive qualitative case study, responding to the recent call in the literature on how to mitigate such challenges, we will show that social enterprises could employ two strategies called people circulation and weaving warp and weft to achieve a reintegrated, embedded situation referred as yin and yang with a mitigated faultline and lessened tensions.

Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1080/19420676.2021.1987970

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