Corporations are being pushed to dial down their single-minded pursuit of financial gain and pay closer attention to their impact on employees, customers, communities, and the environment. But changing an organization's DNA may require upending the existing business model and lowering profitability, at least in the short term. The authors' research suggests that successful dual-purpose companies build a commitment to creating both economic and social value into their core activities. This approach, which they call hybrid organizing, includes setting and monitoring social goals alongside financial ones; structuring the organization to support both; hiring and mobilizing employees to embrace them; and practicing dual-minded leadership.

Hybrid organizations pursuing a social mission while relying on a commercial business model have paved the way for a new approach to achieving societal impact. Although they bear strong promise, social enterprises are also fragile organizations that must walk a fine line between achieving a social mission and living up to the requirements of the market. This article moves beyond generic recommendations about managing hybrids in order to highlight a typology of social business hybrids and discuss how each of the four proposed types of hybrid organizations can be managed in order to avoid the danger of mission drift and better achieve financial sustainability.

Marie Trellu-Kane is trying to decide how Unis-Cite should respond to French President Jacques Chirac's announcement in 2005 of a new national voluntary civil service program. Since 1994, Trellu-Kane and her co-founders had been creating and overseeing a civil service program called Unis-Cite, in which youth, particularly from the disadvantaged immigrant population, volunteered nine months of their time to work on community projects. Based in Paris, France, Unis-Cite had begun to expand to other areas. With the announcement that the government would provide funding to mobilize thousands of youth volunteers, Trellu-Kane needed to decide how Unis-Cite would proceed.

Marie Trellu-Kane is trying to decide how Unis-Cite should respond to French President Jacques Chirac's announcement in 2005 of a new national voluntary civil service program. Since 1994, Trellu-Kane and her co-founders had been creating and overseeing a civil service program called Unis-Cite, in which youth, particularly from the disadvantaged immigrant population, volunteered nine months of their time to work on community projects. Based in Paris, France, Unis-Cite had begun to expand to other areas. With the announcement that the government would provide funding to mobilize thousands of youth volunteers, Trellu-Kane needed to decide how Unis-Cite would proceed.

ENVIE and ACTIF are two French social enterprises that aim at creating employment opportunities for long-term unemployed people through refurbishing and selling used goods. Both organizations are regarded as successes in their field, as both their economic and social performances are superior to the averages of other organizations in the field, yet ENVIE scaled much further than ACTIF. The case describes how they were founded as well as how each of them grew from one local site to a national network. Their respective scale-up strategies are illustrated at length, emphasizing how each of them designed a new organizational structure, selected new sites, hired new site entrepreneurs, raised start-up funds, developed partnerships and built systems and capacity.

ENVIE and ACTIF are two French social enterprises that aim at creating employment opportunities for long-term unemployed people through refurbishing and selling used goods. Both organizations are regarded as successes in their field, as both their economic and social performances are superior to the averages of other organizations in the field, yet ENVIE scaled much further than ACTIF. The case describes how they were founded as well as how each of them grew from one local site to a national network. Their respective scale-up strategies are illustrated at length, emphasizing how each of them designed a new organizational structure, selected new sites, hired new site entrepreneurs, raised start-up funds, developed partnerships and built systems and capacity.