Recruiting, managing and rewarding workers in social enterprises

Over the last decade, social entrepreneurship has grown in importance as a cultural and economic phenomenon in both developed and emerging economies (Dacin, Dacin, & Matear, 2010; Dacin, Dacin, & Tracey, 2011; Desa, 2012). Social enterprise (SE) refers to organisations that engage in business to achieve social impact rather than solely financial gain. As such we differentiate SE from charitable ventures that rely on donations and/or government funding as a major source of their income (Austin, Stevenson, & Wei-Skillern, 2006). In this special issue, we are interested in the contribution of HRM activities to sustain SEs business mission and social outcomes. As such, we are interested in how researchers theorise and explore HRM challenges in SEs as they strive to harness their competing or hybrid logics. More generally, it is the hybrid logic of SEs that is of great interest to management (and HRM) scholars. Empirical interest arises as they are an emerging organisational type exhibiting novel ways that engage with and integrate competing logics to achieve and sustain business and social missions (Battilana & Dorado, 2010; Doherty, Haugh, & Lyon, 2014). Theoretical interest derives from Battilana and Lee’s (2014) reminder that studying SEs as novel organisational forms may offer new insights into mainstream management and organisation behaviour (see also Doherty et al., 2014). Furthermore, given the entrepreneurial nature of many SEs, understanding how SEs create and sustain social and economic value, adds to our understanding of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial behaviour. As Chell (2007) explains, expanding the definition of entrepreneurship to incorporate the creation of social value, allows us to apply an entrepreneurship lens to understanding the sustainability challenges faced by SEs.