Business Ethics Quarterly· 2013Q1· Review
Managing Social-Business Tensions: A Review and Research Agenda for Social Enterprise
- 883citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2013year
Short summary
This review systematically categorizes and analyzes the inherent tensions between social missions and business ventures within social enterprises, offering a framework for understanding and managing these conflicts.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Social enterprises face inherent tensions between their social missions and business ventures.
- Existing research lacks a systematic analysis of these social-business tensions.
- The paper categorizes the types of tensions and explores insights from four organizational theories.
- It proposes a future research agenda integrating social enterprise insights with traditional organizational theories.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
ABSTRACT: In a world filled with poverty, environmental degradation, and moral injustice, social enterprises offer a ray of hope. These organizations seek to achieve social missions through business ventures. Yet social missions and business ventures are associated with divergent goals, values, norms, and identities. Attending to them simultaneously creates tensions, competing demands, and ethical dilemmas. Effectively understanding social enterprises therefore depends on insight into the nature and management of these tensions. While existing research recognizes tensions between social missions and business ventures, we lack any systematic analysis. Our paper addresses this issue. We first categorize the types of tensions that arise between social missions and business ventures, emphasizing their prevalence and variety. We then explore how four different organizational theories offer insight into these tensions, and we develop an agenda for future research. We end by arguing that a focus on social-business tensions not only expands insight into social enterprises, but also provides an opportunity for research on social enterprises to inform traditional organizational theories. Taken together, our analysis of tensions in social enterprises integrates and seeks to energize research on this expanding phenomenon.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Business Ethics Quarterly, 2013 · DOI ↗
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Field: Business and International Management
Business and International ManagementBusiness, Management and Accounting