Understanding the management of internal tensions between mandates and mission in small and medium-sized social enterprises

Abstract

The ability to manage internal tensions arising from the need to safeguard social mission amidst multiple stakeholder mandates is an important issue for social enterprise research and practice because of the potential to de-rail social enterprises’ effective functioning. This is especially so for small and medium-sized social enterprises (SMSEs) existing in resource-constrained environments. Extant social enterprise literature suggests that organisations’ failure to balance tensions informed by incompatible dual social-commercial logics results in mission drift. Recent literature further acknowledges the complexities of balancing multiple tensions as organisations attempt to align multiple external mandates and core social mission, in the quest to continuously explore and exploit opportunities. Besides, the literature does not describe how practices and routine activities in SMSEs enable the simultaneous alignment of mission and multiple mandates. To bridge this gap, the study investigates how SMSEs in resource-constrained environments simultaneously align multiple mandates and mission. Using a qualitative case study approach, the study examines five identified South African SMSEs using purposive homogenous sampling to understand how they fulfil multiple mandates while safeguarding their missions. The context was chosen due to SMSEs increasingly pursuing multiple funding arrangements. The findings highlight the significance of leveraging community embeddedness, mission agility, and the proactive use of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) to balance mission and mandates. These elements anchor the ‘art of practising’ actions and ‘dynamic artefacts’ within SMSEs' activities to ensure simultaneous ambidexterity. The study contributes to the social enterprise literature by introducing a framework for simultaneous internal−external practising that enables SMSEs to align multiple mandates with their mission. It also extends ambidexterity beyond ‘dual’ explore−exploit decisions to the simultaneous management of competing multiple goals at a micro-level, showing how SMSEs' art of practicing and dynamic artefacts facilitate this balance