Outcome-Based Typology of Social Enterprises (Polychronopoulos et al., 2024)

Welcome to Revise and Resubmit, where we take you deep into the world of academic research, uncovering fresh ideas and groundbreaking studies that shape the way we think about business, management, and society. Today, we’re diving into a paper that touches on something deeply important: social entrepreneurship. Social enterprises are the unsung heroes of today’s world, tackling massive societal challenges with a mix of passion and strategy. But how do we measure their impact? How do we know if they’re truly making a difference? Today, we explore the paper 'Outcome-Based Typology of Social Enterprises: Interlacing Individual Transformation, Capital Provision, and Societal Influence,' authored by Georgios Polychronopoulos, Martin Lukeš, Giuliano Sansone, Anirudh Agrawal, Florian Ulrich-Diener, and Veronika Šlapáková Losová, published in the prestigious Journal of Management Studies journal. This study takes a unique approach, comparing 49 social ventures across 10 countries—from Austria to India to the United States. What the authors found was that social enterprises don’t just focus on one goal. Instead, they balance multiple dimensions: transforming individuals, providing much-needed capital, and influencing society as a whole. From this, they identified seven distinct types of social enterprises, each facing its own set of challenges, each navigating the institutional, financial, and social barriers to change. So, what does it take to solve the world’s most complex social and environmental problems? Can social enterprises really tackle everything from poverty to climate change with multi-objective organizing? Or are there limits to what they can achieve when the stakes are this high? Let’s find out. And a special thanks to Society for the Advancement of Management Studies and John Wiley & Sons for making this paper open access to the public. The world of academic research is better because of it. Reference Polychronopoulos, G., Lukeš, M., Sansone, G., Agrawal, A., Ulrich‐Diener, F., & Šlapáková Losová, V. (2024). Outcome‐Based Typology of Social Enterprises: Interlacing Individual Transformation, Capital Provision, and Societal Influence. Journal of Management Studies. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.13138