Social enterprises that operate in business-to-business contexts, often out of emerging economies, typically face high expectations from business clients, mainstream competition, and the challenge of operating across distances. In these contexts, social enterprises need to carefully choose which market segments to serve and how to organize their social mission accordingly. Based on the case of impact sourcing—hiring and training of disadvantaged staff for global business services—we seek to better understand this interplay. In general, we find that social enterprises in this (...) context focus on serving either domestic clients with an implicit social mission and an integrated social enterprise model or international clients with a more explicit social mission and a decoupled model. We discuss why both main configurations represent viable social enterprise models in the outsourcing industry, and why, in particular, the professional background of founders plays a key role in these strategic choices. Our findings contribute to a more nuanced and context-sensitive understanding of social enterprise model adoption in emerging economies. (shrink)

As Social Economy financial institutions, credit unions have traditionally been considered less efficient than traditional banking entities. However, like banks and savings banks, they have to be as efficient and competitive as possible to survive in today’s business environment, especially at times of crisis. To date, there have been very few studies on their efficiency and practically none for the crisis period. Moreover, almost all the existing studies assess only financial efficiency, without considering their social function. This study examines the (...) levels of both financial and social efficiency in Spanish credit unions as well as their main determinants during the recent crisis. We apply the two-stage double bootstrap data envelopment analysis methodology based on panel data corresponding to all the credit unions active in Spain between 2008 and 2013. The empirical results indicate that financial and social efficiency achieved an acceptable level, although on average the former was slightly greater than the latter. We also find that both age and merger and acquisition activity were positively influential on the financial efficiency of credit unions but had a significant negative effect on their social efficiency. Moreover, the regional location of such entities and the financial crisis were also crucial determinants of both types of efficiency. Our findings are therefore useful for all the stakeholders of credit unions to know if these entities have been efficient according to a double bottom line accounting in the crisis period and hence to maintain successful social management that is compatible with satisfactory financial efficiency. (shrink)

As a rapidly growing field of study, social entrepreneurship is increasingly receiving attention from scholars and practitioners because social ventures have the potential to contribute to economic growth and social innovation. Surprisingly, the role of leadership in social venture growth has received very limited attention. One reason for this omission may be that entrepreneurship and leadership evolved as separate domains. Applying leadership theory to social ventures can help scholars and managers understand how social entrepreneurs can manage the environmental risks, dual (...) mission, and legitimacy issues of social ventures. Our goal for this conceptual paper is to describe how social entrepreneurs can align employees with the seemingly inconsistent goals of social and economic value creation to improve venture performance. We do so by concentrating on a leadership style applicable to their dual mission—servant leadership. Drawing from theoretical underpinnings and examples from single case studies, we offer a research framework and related propositions that delineate how servant leadership style affects social venture performance through the perception of work meaningfulness, well-being, and job engagement. We contribute to theory building by uncovering how social entrepreneurs can share their personal passions, values, and obligations with their employees and inspire them to meet their dual mission, paying attention to the context of social ventures and the attributes of the employees they attract. We also discuss theoretical and practical implications for social entrepreneurship and offer future research directions. (shrink)