Anchors aweigh: the sources, variety, and challenges of mission drift

The growing number of studies which reference the concept of mission drift imply that such drift is an undesirable strategic outcome related to inconsistent organizational action, yet beyond such references little is known about how mission drift occurs, how it impacts organizations, and how organizations should respond. Existing management theory more broadly offers initial albeit equivocal insight for understanding mission drift. On the one hand, prior studies have argued that inconsistent or divergent action can lead to weakened stakeholder commitment and reputational damage. On the other hand, scholars have suggested that because environments are complex and dynamic, such action is necessary for ensuring organizational adaptation and thus survival. In this study, we offer a theory of mission drift that unpacks its origin, clarifies its variety, and specifies how organizations might respond to external perceptions of mission drift. The resulting conceptual model addresses the aforementioned theoretical tension and offers novel insight into the relationship between organizational actions and identity

International Business as disciplinary tautology: an ontological perspective

The identity, legitimacy, and sustainability of international business (IB) as a research field are at stake. IB is being overtaken by the evolution of industries and technology, and critical voices challenge its distinctiveness and value. We identify IB’s ambiguous conceptual space, articulate the roots of the problem, and suggest a perspective for re-legitimizing the discipline. Specifically, we contend that redrawing legitimate knowledge boundaries for IB requires an ontological shift. In this respect, we promote a focus on the processual constitution of international entities across time and a reconceptualization of IB as the amalgamation of local and international forces. The perspective we advocate aims to counterbalance the disciplinary tautology suffered by current IB conceptualizations and to open up the discussion on boundary identification in the field

Category spanning, evaluation, and performance: revised theory and test on the corporate law market

Studies suggest that category-spanning organizations receive lower evaluation and perform worse than organizations focused on a single category. We propose that (1) these effects are contingent on clients' theory of value and that as clients expect more sophisticated services, they tend to value category spanners more positively and (2) the evaluation of producers mediates the relationship between category spanning and performance. We test our hypotheses using original data on corporate legal services in three markets (London, New York City, and Paris) over the decade 2000-2010. We find that (1) category spanners receive a better evaluation, and more so when their categorical combination is more inclusive and (2) evaluation mediates significantly the relationship between category spanning and performance. This study enriches our understanding of how audiences apprehend a whole market category system and why organizations span categories.The HEC Foundation and the Society & Organizations Research Center provided financial support for this research

The Transformation from Traditional Nonprofit Organizations to Social Enterprises: An Institutional Entrepreneurship Perspective

The development of commercial revenue streams allows traditional nonprofit organizations to increase financial certainty in response to the reduction of traditional funding sources and increased competition. In order to capture commercial revenue-generating opportunities, traditional nonprofit organizations need to deliberately transform themselves into social enterprises. Through the theoretical lens of institutional entrepreneurship, we explore the institutional work that supports this transformation by analyzing field interviews with 64 institutional entrepreneurs from UK-based social enterprises. We find that the route to incorporate commercial processes and convert traditional nonprofit organizations into social enterprises requires six distinct kinds of institutional work at three different domains; these are—“engaging commercial revenue strategies”, “creating a professionalized organizational form”, and “legitimating a socio-commercial business model”. In elaborating on social entrepreneurship research and practice, we offer a comprehensive framework delineating the key practices contributing to the transformation from traditional nonprofit organizations to social enterprises. This extends our understanding of the ex-ante strategy of incorporating commercial processes within social organizations. Furthermore, the identification of these practices also offers an important tool for scholars in this field to examine the connection (or disconnection) of each practice with different ethical concerns of social entrepreneurship in greater depth.British Academ

Brace for impact: uniting our diverse voices through a social impact frame

The research on prosocial organizing is undeniably broad, with studies examining enterprises that embody a variety of organizational forms, pursue a wide range of social goals, and face numerous internal and external challenges. Qualitative and quantitative research methods have both been used, and arguments have been developed that touch on almost all areas of management theory. Yet despite this diversity, all of this research is arguably motivated by a desire to: 1) understand the challenges faced by organizations that aspire to create value for people, communities, and the natural environment (Rynes et al., 2012; Walsh, 2011) and; 2) help these organizations to achieve their social and environmental goals (Nason et al., 2018; Walsh, 2011). To date, however, few studies in the management literature have directly considered how prosocial organizations impact society. The typical approach has been to focus on organization-level processes, outputs and outcomes, while taking for granted that prosocial organizing has positive societal impacts. On one hand, this approach has catalyzed a rich and growing literature that speaks to the challenges of prosocial organizing (Battilana and Lee, 2014; Battilana et al., 2017; Rynes et al., 2012) as well as the processes through which these organizations emerge (Sine and Lee, 2009; Tracey et al., 2011), acquire resources (Cobb et al., 2016; Moss et al., 2018; York et al., 2016; Zhao et al., 2016) and scale (André and Pache, 2016; Seelos and Mair, 2017). Yet by leaving societal impact implicit, scholars have more to do if we are to advance knowledge about how prosocial organizing impacts society. In this editorial we advocate for bringing social impact considerations to the fore, and argue that scholars who study prosocial organizing be thoughtful about how their work contributes to such understanding. We believe that doing so can provide the foundation for more integrative and generative research conversations that embrace the institutional and organizational aspects of creating social impact, as well as the interplay between the two. Before proceeding, though, it is important to define what we mean by "impact." When thinking about impact, there are multiple levels at which change may be affected (Rawhouser et al., 2017; Smith and Besharov, 2017). To this end, development practitioners have long recognized that impact comprises much more than the link between a specific intervention and a desired outcome. Rather, impact is the endpoint of a causal chain (or logic model) wherein an enterprise acquires resources, transforms these into activities, and creates outputs that impact society (Ebrahim and Rangan, 2014; McLaughlin and Jordan, 2005; van Tulder et al., 2016). Traditionally, this type of model has been used to assess the performance of individual organizations. However, by providing a framework to think about the processes through which impact is created, we argue that the logic model can be usefully adapted to: 1) organize disparate studies in the management and entrepreneurship literature into coherent, impact-oriented, research streams; 2) provide scholars with a language to both situate and convey their contributions to social impact research, and; 3) help identify theoretical and empirical puzzles that point to opportunities for future research. In this editorial we review the logic model and discuss its relevance for research on prosocial organizing. Specifically, we argue that by defining and differentiating between aspects of the impact-creation process, the logic model helps both to organize existing studies in a way that shows their relevance for understanding social impact, and highlights opportunities for future research. In this regard, the logic model can be applied in a variety of ways: for instance, it might be used to map-out research that focuses on a specific type of organization (e.g., an impact model of microfinance) or on a particular societal outcome (e.g., an impact model of empowerment). For our purposes, though, we use the logic model to organize key studies on social entrepreneurship; arguably the dominant prosocial organizing research stream. Through this exercise, we show that management scholars have contributed in many ways to our understanding of how social enterprises pursue prosocial goals. Yet we also note that this work says little about the achievement of broader systemic change. Based on our analysis, we suggest three principal domains for future impact research. In short, our approach encourages scholars to recognize how their work connects to broader conversations about social impact, both in general terms, and in relation to specific organizations, activities and outcomes. In so doing, we note that there are many ways to contribute to impact research, and that no one study, theory, or research method can address the complexity of the phenomenon. Each study contributes a knowledge piece to a much larger puzzle. In this spirit, we aim to show that embracing the logic model for impact research can help management scholars find common cause in diverse approaches, while also pursuing research that advances collective understanding about social impact in general terms, as well as in specific empirical domains. In this regard, we encourage scholars to reclaim the early mantle of our profession, and embrace considerations of impact in our work (Hinings and Greenwood, 2002; Rynes et al., 2012). While there is no need for this to take away from broader theoretical discussions—or attempts to advance research on such conceptual frontiers—we see great opportunities to engage deeply with different organizational contexts, different interventions, and different desired impacts in the spirit of affecting and supporting change that extends beyond the narrow confines of the academic community