HKS Authors

See citation below for complete author information.

Alan L. Gleitsman Professor of Social Innovation, HKS; Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Business Administration, HBS

Abstract

Drawing on an inductive comparative case study of eight work integration social enterprises (WISEs) in France, we examine the unique governance challenge that hybrid organizations face: maintaining their attention on the joint pursuit of their dual social and commercial goals. We find that WISEs with governance actors (that typically include board members and top managers) who collectively represent both the social welfare and commercial logics are more likely to maintain their focus on the organization’s dual goals. However, they are also more likely to experience governance crises that monopolize governance actors’ attention, distracting their strategic focus from the joint pursuit of its dual goals. Finally, our findings suggest that WISEs with diverse governance actors can avoid governance crises when they rely on governance arrangements that ensure both stability in the allocation of decision making rights between representatives of the social and commercial logics and the existence of integration mechanisms that foster mutual understanding between the governance actors who represent the social logic and those representing the commercial one.

Citation

Pache, Anne-Claire, Julie Battilana, and Channing Spencer. "Keeping an Eye on Two Goals: Governance and Organizational Attention in Hybrid Organizations." Academy of Management Proceedings 2018.1 (2018).