Making Hybrids Work: Aligning Business Models and Organizational Design for Social Enterprises

Abstract

Hybrid organizations pursuing a social mission while relying on a commercial business model have paved the way for a new approach to achieving societal impact. Although they bear strong promise, social enterprises are also fragile organizations that must walk a fine line between achieving a social mission and living up to the requirements of the market. This article moves beyond generic recommendations about managing hybrids in order to highlight a typology of social business hybrids and discuss how each of the four proposed types of hybrid organizations can be managed in order to avoid the danger of mission drift and better achieve financial sustainability.