The Role of Social Enterprise and Hybrid Organizations

Posted by on April 21, 2014

[posted from Community Development Finance listserve]

I am forwarding the Social Science Research Network link to my recent article, The Role of Social Enterprise and Hybrid Organizations, which may be of interest to many of you. The goal of the article is to advance a theory of social enterprise and hybrid organizations that can inform legal policy. The article which was recently posted as a Yale Law & Economics Working Paper is available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2379012

The main claims in the article are summarized in my post on the Harvard Corporate Governance Blog: https://blogs.law.harvard.edu/corpgov/2014/02/03/the-role-of-social-enterprise-and-hybrid-organizations/#more-58776

Ofer Eldar

Abstract:
Recent years have brought remarkable growth in hybrid organizations that combine profit-seeking and social missions. Despite popular enthusiasm for such organizations, legal reforms to facilitate their formation and growth – including, in particular, special enabling statutes for hybrid firms – have largely been ineffective. This failure stems in large part from the lack of a theory that identifies the structural and functional elements that make some types of hybrid organizations more effective than others. In pursuit of such a theory, this article focuses on a large class of hybrid organizations that has been effective in addressing development problems, such as increasing access to capital and improving employment opportunities. These organizations, which are commonly referred to as “social enterprises,” include microfinance institutions, firms that sell fair trade products, work integration firms, and low-cost sellers of essential goods and services such as eyeglasses, bed-nets and healthcare…