Evitando Mission drift: o papel das aceleradoras na manutenção da lógica híbrida dos negócios de impacto social

Abstract

The interest by the social enterprises has been growing in recent decades, considering that these organizations represent a promising source for generating social, economic and financial value. However, as they ally social value creation and financial sustainability, they combine elements from different institutional logics and may face challenges inherent to this combination. In this way, in order that these organizations achieve success, it is necessary to develop a robust support ecosystem. Among the actors of the ecosystem, the accelerators stand out. They aim to support the growth of social enterprises at an early stage or an expansion stage, exercising, in this way, an important role in the construction and development of institutional logics in these organizations. Consequently, they influence the way in which them avoid mission drift, a phenomenon that consists in the detachment of a business from its social mission. Therefore, the objective of this study is to analyze the strategies used by the accelerators to ensure and to monitor that the social enterprises maintain the hybrid logic, achieving the balance between the creation of social value and financial sustainability, avoiding mission drift. In order to achieve the proposed objective, it was conducted a multiple case study, with four accelerators, working with social enterprises. The sources of mission drift, as well as the strategies to avoid the phenomenon during the acceleration were identified through the understanding of the role that the accelerators exercise in maintaining the hybrid business logic in the business fueled by them, contributing, in this way, with the theoretical and managerial field. The theoretical implications of the study consist in the identification of the influence that the accelerators exert over the social enterprises boosted by them, through the strategies used to ensure the maintenance of the hybrid logic, contributing to the study of institutional logics as well as to the phenomenon of mission drift. Regarding the managerial contributions, the study provides a set of strategies to be used by the accelerators, in order to ensure and monitor the maintenance of the balance between the creation of social value and the financial sustainability in the business accelerated by them.