Growing up from In-Betweeners: Alternatives to Hybridity in Social Entrepreneurship Research

Social ventures (SVs) based on social entrepreneurship are often labeled in the literature as hybrids because of their inherent different institutional logics between social and commercial thinking. As one potential consequence, it is further argued that these not-yet institutionalized organizational forms lack legitimacy. In this conceptual paper, we articulate our concerns with this trend in social entrepreneurship research. We propose configuration theory as an alternative approach to move forward and argue that from a configurational lens such SVs can be identified as distinct, yet coherent configurations driven by their intrinsic and idiosyncratic value bundles and related value creation goals. We demonstrate how this helps overcome the raised concerns and contribute to the literature on social entrepreneurship and configuration theory.