Students of hybridity and social enterprise share a fundamental problem of making sense of constellations of organisations with competing organisational principles or logics. In this symbiotic relationship, hybridity is a constant theme in social enterprise writing; and for hybridity theorists social enterprise is a important exemplar of organisational hybridity.
Even a modest review of social enterprise literature reveals the increasing depth and importance of the symbiotic relationship. Although used in different ways in this literature, it has been claimed to be its key characteristic (Gidron and Hasenfeld 2012: p.3). Indeed, it can be argued that the search for a robust boundary for the social enterprise venture, is dependent on clarifying its relationship with the notion of hybridity. Conversely, the development of an increasingly useful theory of hybridity will need to get to grips with the increasingly complex social enterprise organisational forms. Exploring the relationship between hybridity and social enterprise is a broad purpose of this paper; more specific research questions are posed in the following section.
Overall, the research approach can be summarised as problem-driven collaboration with organisations in the development of usable theory. This approach underpins the development of the concepts and models used later in this paper which have twin purposes: to provide usable theory for better understanding the identity challenge of social enterprise and, to test and sharpen the utility of the current stage of a particular “prime accountability” theory of hybridity in responding to that challenge.
The paper begins by exploring some of the main themes of the symbiotic relationship in order to present four more specific research questions which provide a framework for the paper. The core theoretical part of the paper is then presented, followed by a discussion of the theory and concepts in action, before the final summary and conclusions.