Organizational hybrids as biological hybrids: Insights for research on the relationship between social enterprise and the entrepreneurial ecosystem

By Jeffery S. McMullen. Journal of Business Venturing, 2018

122 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using the study of hybridization in evolutionary biology as metaphorical inspiration, I offer a thought experiment about the emergence and proliferation of social enterprise and the influence of hybrid organizing on the entrepreneurial ecosystem. After establishing a number of analogues between biological and organizational hybrids, I analyze the degree to which social enterprise may be indicative of hybrid speciation – i.e., a new organizational form – versus introgressive hybridization – i.e., a variant of a more traditional organizational form. I then use the metaphor to examine whether social enterprise: (1) possesses distinct rules and features, (2) is shaped by or shaping the entrepreneurial ecosystem, (3) still remains a hybrid organization, and (4) might even be considered an invasive species.

Subfields: Business and International Management, Management of Technology and Innovation, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8ee82f6887d9c826c82c8e499a37956938688844

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Citations in the corpus

What Makes an Entrepreneurship Study Entrepreneurial? Toward A Unified Theory of Entrepreneurial Agency (2020, background): “…focus of scholars interested in organizing (Gartner et al., 2010; Gatewood et al., 1995) and has re- emerged more recently in the form of ideation (Kier & McMullen, 2018), pivoting (Grimes, 2018; McMullen, 2017), and variations on lean startup (Ries, 2011) and design thinking (Brown & Katz, 2011).”
Social entrepreneurship research: A review and future research agenda (2020, background): “SE emerges during an economic crisis, either as a self-employment alternative to unemployment or as a commercial venture started by not-for-profit organisations as a reaction to the reduction in public expense in that sector (McMullen, 2018).”