Essays on social enterprises as hybrid organizations

Abstract

Scholars’ recent interest in organization and management studies centers on social enterprises as hybrid organizations, combining two seemingly incompatible organizational forms, business and charity. This dissertation aims to unearth and address theoretically meaningful research questions regarding social enterprises as hybrid organizations in organization and management studies. In this dissertation, the following two questions are examined: (1) How do social enterprises as hybrid organizations gain legitimacy? and (2) how do social enterprises as hybrid organizations cope with paradoxical tensions? To address these research questions, this dissertation adopts an inductive multiple case study approach by investigating social enterprises in the Republic of Korea. Our findings reveal social enterprises’ hybrid identities and hybrid organizational types determine their legitimation patterns. Furthermore, our analysis empirically confirms four types of paradoxes and systematically shows how social enterprises manage these paradoxes. This dissertation provides theoretical contributions to the emerging research theme of hybrid organization and paradox theory by examining social enterprises as hybrid organizations. Additionally, the insights from this dissertation give several useful recommendations for social entrepreneurs and their employees to use as they sustain their organizations as hybrid organizations.