Thesis advisor: Eve Spangler / Social enterprises are nonprofit, for-profit or hybrid organizations that use business methods to create social change (Dees 2007; Light 2005; Martin and Osberg 2007; Neck, Brush, and Allen 2009;). If it succeeds, the social enterprise model could prove to be a viable pathway to greater social justice in an era of decreasing funding for government services and nonprofits (Emerson and Twersky 1996; Harding 2004; Murphy and Coombs 2009; Wilson 2008). However, skeptics worry that the perils of privatization, bottom-line thinking, and deceptive marketing potentially embodied by the “business methods” that social enterprises employ may undermine the potential of this new approach to solving social problems (Bateman and Chang 2012; Farmer 2009; Nega and Schneider 2014). The three articles that make up this dissertation examined the ways social entrepreneurs perceived and managed tensions between social mission and market institutional logics. Their ability (or lack thereof) to reconcile these contradictory imperatives could contribute to whether social enterprises ultimately succeed or fail as vehicles for positive social change. Social Entrepreneurs at the Crossroads: Four Approaches to Responding to Dual Institutional Logics suggests that the widely accepted characterization of social entrepreneurs as compassionate individuals motivated to address intractable social problems innovatively (Alvord, Brown and Letts 2004; Lehner and Germak 2014; Mair and Marti 2006; Miller, Grimes, McMullen and Vogus 2012) is simplistic. From in-depth interviews with twenty (inter)nationally recognized social entrepreneurs I derived four distinct categories: Disillusioned Dreamers, Social Capitalists, Do-Somethings, and Bridgebuilders. Half of these respondents did not perceive tensions between logics; another quarter did not wrestle with the tensions they perceived. Only the Bridgebuilders perceived tensions and then persisted in focusing on both logics and sets of actors to harness synergies. As a result, only Bridgebuilders offer a truly hybrid model for social mission work within the current economic context, whereas the others hew toward a single dominant logic. One Size Does Not Fit All: Legal Form and US WISEs focuses on work integration social enterprises (WISEs), organizations that address the chronic unemployment of marginalized populations. The data demonstrated that contrary to the expectation that WISEs would exemplify “contested” organizations (Besharov and Smith 2014), eight of the ten WISEs studied did not experience significant conflict between social mission and market logics. Rather, WISEs generally had one logic that dominated their operations: a market logic in for-profit WISEs and a social mission logic in nonprofit WISEs. Workers’ employability emerged as an important variable, with for-profit WISEs creating jobs for more employable populations and nonprofits offering job training and “wraparound” services to harder-to-employ populations. Only two WISEs experienced substantial tensions, when social entrepreneurs attempted to prioritize a job training/services mission within a for-profit form. This data demonstrates that a job creation approach aligns best with a for-profit WISE form and a job training/services approach to a nonprofit WISE form. However, neither form has succeeded in creating a system-transforming model that successfully combines revenue generation with a robust training/services/job creation mission. This suggests that breaking traditional nonprofit and for-profit patterns to deliver substantial market and social mission outcomes within a single organization is a significant challenge. Stakeholder Resistance to Social Enterprise Hybridity examines how social entrepreneurs perceive the support of key stakeholders in their attempts to balance competing social mission and market logics. Despite evidence of social interest in ethical capitalism, this data suggests that well-resourced stakeholders push social entrepreneurs to prioritize price, revenue generation, and measurement. This includes both traditional organizational stakeholders and hybrid-specific stakeholders. Customers and clients demanded low prices and high value. Donors demanded quantification and impact measurement. Investors expected market rate financial return. Finally, social enterprise gatekeeper organizations (fellowship granting bodies) were focused on the market logic characteristics of sustainability, scale, and entrepreneurial ability, pushing the field toward market logic modes of operating. Social entrepreneurs generally responded by acquiescing to pressure to emphasize a market logic in their interactions. Counter to current literature that suggests social entrepreneurs should problem-solve to avoid single logic dominance, social entrepreneurs generally allowed price, business strategy, competition and measurement to shape their interactions with stakeholders. Given the importance of stakeholder buy-in for organizational legitimacy, the field of social enterprise needs to find a way to create and capture stakeholder support for dual logics rather than depending on individual social entrepreneurs to withstand the push toward marketization. Overall, despite persistent efforts at creative solutions to social problems by some individuals, the research shows a strong undertow for social enterprises to adopt business logics and business models. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

Due to increasing emergence of social needs and problems throughout the world, accompanied by reduced government ability to provide the funding necessary to effectively combat these problems, it is expected that social enterprises will grow in number and importance. Because of this growing importance and the lack of research concerning marketing practices in such organizations, the purpose of this thesis is to develop a deeper understanding of both marketing in social enterprises and the context in social enterprises that has the potential to affect the marketing strategies employed in such organizations. Based upon this enhanced understanding, I develop and propose a model of marketing strategy in social enterprises. To develop this enhanced understanding and model, I conducted empirical qualitative research consisting of a comparative study of fifteen cases of social enterprises. Results show that four major dualities represent the critical context of social enterprises that influence the marketing strategies employed. Marketing is viewed as important by these enterprises and the strategies employed are quite well developed in the areas of market research, product quality, branding, and promotion.

Due to increasing emergence of social needs and problems throughout the world, accompanied by reduced government ability to provide the funding necessary to effectively combat these problems, it is expected that social enterprises will grow in number and importance. Because of this growing importance and the lack of research concerning marketing practices in such organizations, the purpose of this thesis is to develop a deeper understanding of both marketing in social enterprises and the context in social enterprises that has the potential to affect the marketing strategies employed in such organizations. Based upon this enhanced understanding, I develop and propose a model of marketing strategy in social enterprises. To develop this enhanced understanding and model, I conducted empirical qualitative research consisting of a comparative study of fifteen cases of social enterprises. Results show that four major dualities represent the critical context of social enterprises that influence the marketing strategies employed. Marketing is viewed as important by these enterprises and the strategies employed are quite well developed in the areas of market research, product quality, branding, and promotion.

Social enterprises are hybrid organizations which are partly for-profit and partly nonprofit. As entities create social value via market mechanisms, they are influenced by the factors that could impact the market. While social enterprises directly involve in the production of goods or the provision of services in the marketplace, consumer¡¦s awareness and supports are important. Perception, motivation, and satisfaction can influence consumer behavior. Instead of studying social enterprises from the organization perspective like many previous studies, this research attempts to explore social enterprises from consumers¡¦ perspective and to investigate the connections between consumers and social enterprises. The Children Are Us Foundation is social welfare foundation helping people with mental disabilities. It operates affirmative businesses (bakeries and restaurants) to provide training and employment for disadvantaged people, and in order to diversify funding channels. These ventures contribute around 50% of annual revenue. Many literatures in Taiwan recognized it as a social enterprise. The purpose of this research was to explore consumer perception, motivation, and satisfaction for social enterprise. This research has conducted a questionnaire survey on consumers of five bakeries and restaurants that are managed by this foundation. This aim of this survey is to investigate consumer perception, motivation, and satisfaction toward this type of social enterprise. The results revealed that consumer perception correlates with contacting type of social enterprise ventures. The results also indicated that ¡§want to help disadvantaged groups¡¨ appears to be the main reason that consumers consume in these shops. The major satisfactory factor is the service attributes associated with personnel. Significant differences are found among consumers with different demographic attributes on their perception, motivation, and satisfaction. Finally, this paper provides suggestions in two directions: finding the values shared between the social enterprises and the consumers, and cultivating social enterprise consumers.

Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate the factors that motivate people to work for social enterprises and how social enterprise can attract qualified employees.Method: Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used. The qualitative data were collected by interviews with 7 participants from 4 social enterprises in Gävleborg of Sweden. We gathered the quantitative data via questionnaires which were collected from 38 MBA students in University of Gävle.Result and Conclusions: By comparison between the expectation of MBA students and reality of the social enterprises, we found promotion opportunities and work environment are the factors which restrict social enterprises to attract employees and motivate people.Suggestion for further studies: Based on the exiting researches and our experiences, most studies focus on the financial problems and entrepreneur problems of the social enterprises. We suggest that further research could investigate the other aspects of social enterprises such as management problems or network of social enterprise.Contribution of the thesis: In this study, the most important factor to motivate students work for social enterprises are pointed out as work environment and we also give suggestions to social enterprises to improve their attractiveness, such as improving the promotion chance for employees.

Due to increasing emergence of social needs and problems throughout the world, accompanied by reduced government ability to provide the funding necessary to effectively combat these problems, it is expected that social enterprises will grow in number and importance. Because of this growing importance and the lack of research concerning marketing practices in such organizations, the purpose of this thesis is to develop a deeper understanding of both marketing in social enterprises and the context in social enterprises that has the potential to affect the marketing strategies employed in such organizations. Based upon this enhanced understanding, I develop and propose a model of marketing strategy in social enterprises. To develop this enhanced understanding and model, I conducted empirical qualitative research consisting of a comparative study of fifteen cases of social enterprises. Results show that four major dualities represent the critical context of social enterprises that influence the marketing strategies employed. Marketing is viewed as important by these enterprises and the strategies employed are quite well developed in the areas of market research, product quality, branding, and promotion.

Supportive work programs for people with disabilities have historically included sheltered workshops; while social enterprises are now more commonly found in policies and programs providing opportunities to address social, environmental, or economic challenges through revenue generating activities for this group. I began this thesis as a person who works at Haley Street Adult Services Centre Society in Nova Scotia, Canada and who is part of the changing provision from sheltered workshops to social enterprises. My primary research question is what is a non-profit, community-based organization working with people with disabilities, and a history of sheltered workshops, response to the current social enterprise movement? The study provides a case study analysis on Haley Street Adult Services Centre Society and its woodshop and thrift store programs for people with disabilities. The research includes interviews and focus groups with 19 participants (7 staff, 12 program participants) that work in the agency social enterprises as well as an organizational financial analysis. A thematic analysis of the interview and focus group transcripts resulted in the emergence of four themes that explore different aspects of social enterprises that support persons with people with disabilities. The themes included community engagement, demonstrating individual and agency capabilities, improved individual well-being, and agency social-economic tensions. Social enterprise at Haley Street is an integral part of its identity and emergence in the community. The profitability of social enterprise at Haley Street appears to be secondary to the social well-being and engagement of participants. The current research found that sheltered work and social enterprises are comparable entities, with sheltered work a subgroup of social enterprise. / Graduate

Social enterprises is a relatively new way of operating a business that is becoming increasingly popular in our modern society and new social enterprises face a wide array of challenges in their start-up phase. A very common type of challenge that many new social enterprises face are organisational legitimacy challenges when forming collaborations. Due to social entrepreneurship being a relatively new field, research of the legitimacy aspect regarding new social enterprises is lacking. This thesis aims to fill this research gap by explaining why new social enterprise face organisational legitimacy challenges and how they overcome them. The researchers utilized an inductive approach to develop the theory with an explanatory purpose for the research. Single case study of the JU Solar Team was the research strategy chosen to explain the theory and empirical data. The JU Solar Team is a social enterprise that already has overcome their legitimacy challenges when forming collaborations making it a unique and attractive case to study that is difficult to replicate in a multiple case study. The data was gathered through email interviews with members from the JU Solar Team and their collaborators as well as a face-to-face interview with Joakim Brobäck from JU Solar Team’s closest collaborator the Jönköping University School of Engineering. The authors of this thesis concluded that the JU Solar Team Faced organisational legitimacy challenges mostly due to inexperience which resulted in them not being able to efficiently mobilise their limited resources and build networks. The JU Solar Team managed to overcome their legitimacy challenges mainly by diversifying their skillset leading to the team having the human capital needed to communicate the social value and deliver the pragmatic value that the collaborators sought to form collaborations with the JU Solar Team. / No

Due to increasing emergence of social needs and problems throughout the world, accompanied by reduced government ability to provide the funding necessary to effectively combat these problems, it is expected that social enterprises will grow in number and importance. Because of this growing importance and the lack of research concerning marketing practices in such organizations, the purpose of this thesis is to develop a deeper understanding of both marketing in social enterprises and the context in social enterprises that has the potential to affect the marketing strategies employed in such organizations. Based upon this enhanced understanding, I develop and propose a model of marketing strategy in social enterprises. To develop this enhanced understanding and model, I conducted empirical qualitative research consisting of a comparative study of fifteen cases of social enterprises. Results show that four major dualities represent the critical context of social enterprises that influence the marketing strategies employed. Marketing is viewed as important by these enterprises and the strategies employed are quite well developed in the areas of market research, product quality, branding, and promotion.

The aim of this thesis is to provide a view of fulfilment of the local principle in selected social enterprises using the qualitative method of multiple case studies. The local principle and its fulfilment are, along with the social, economic and environmental principles, a cri- terion to distinguish whether or not an examined subject is a social enterprise according to TESSEA. The local principle is characterized by preferential fulfilment of local needs and cooperation with local actors. The thesis describes specific forms of fulfilling the local principle in selected social enterprises within the context of their location. The inquiry about the local principles, their particular forms and obstacles preventing their fulfilment is carried out through examination of documents and mainly by means of semi-structured interviews. Keywords Social enterprise, principles of social enterprise, local principle, indicator