2018/12/13 by Nicole Siebold, Franziska Günzel-Jensen, Franziska Günzel-Jensen +1 · 70 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · #Business #Dual (grammatical number) #Economics #Entrepreneurship #Entrepreneurship Studies and Influences #Finance #Innovation and Socioeconomic Development #Marketing #Microeconomics #New Ventures #Organizational Strategy and Culture #Social entrepreneurship #Social venture capital #Spillover effect #Venture capital
paper · open access · doi:10.1080/08985626.2018.1554710
published in Entrepreneurship and Regional Development 31(9-10), 710-734 (Taylor & Francis)
openalex publication_date 2018/12/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Balancing social and economic missions in the pursuit of growth is one of the greatest challenges faced by social ventures. Although social ventures strive for growth to scale their social impact, pursuing growth often results in mission drift and the sacrifice of social objectives, which in turn eventually undermine the ventures’ raison d’être. In this study, we investigate how and with what outcomes social ventures that pursue growth can manage the balance of social and economic missions. Through a comparative case study of six for-profit social ventures, we find significant differences in how dual missions are selected, connected, and intertwined, leading to varying degrees of mission spillover effects between social and economic missions. Our findings show that two-sided mission spillover effects are a central mechanism in dual mission management, enabling social ventures to pursue balanced growth, avoid mission drift, and achieve social impact. With these findings, this study adds to the emergent literature on social entrepreneurship, dual mission management, and social venture growth.