This article explores how social enterprises, as hybrid organisations that combine social benefit and commercial logics, manage these logics internally. Utilising data collected through a case study of six social enterprises operating within the Australian education and training industry, we show that social enterprises mayadopt a number of practices through which to manage their contrasting logics. These include challenging conceptualisations of profit internally, implementing participatory and…
Read moreThis article explores how social enterprises, as hybrid organisations that combine social benefit and commercial logics, manage these logics internally. Utilising data collected through a case study of six social enterprises operating within the Australian education and training industry, we show that social enterprises mayadopt a number of practices through which to manage their contrasting logics. These include challenging conceptualisations of profit internally, implementing participatory and integrated models of decision-making, as well as creating performance standards that account for multiple objectives. These findings provide insight into how other organisations may reconcile contrasting demands arising from the need to reconcile multiple logics, whilst also further developing our knowledge about how social enterprises operate internally.
