Harnessing Productive Tensions in Hybrid Organizations: The Case of Work Integration Social Enterprises

We examine the factors that influence the social performance of hybrid organizations that pursue a social mission and sustain their operations through commercial activities by studying work integration social enterprises (WISEs). We argue that both social imprinting, defined as a founding team’s early emphasis on accomplishing the organization’s social mission, and economic productivity are important drivers of a WISE’s social performance. However, there is a paradox inherent in the social imprinting of WISEs: Although social imprinting directly enhances a WISE’s social performance, social imprinting also indirectly weakens social performance by negatively affecting economic productivity. Results based on…