Corporations are being pushed to change—to dial down their single-minded pursuit of financial gain and pay closer attention to their impact on employees, customers, communities, and the environment.Corporate social responsibility from the sidelines is no longer enough, and the pressure comes from various directions: rising and untenable levels of inequality, increasing evidence that the effects of climate change will be devastating, investors’ realization that short-term profitability and long-term sustainability are sometimes in conflict. For reasons like these, a growing number of business leaders now understand that they must embrace both financial and social goals.
However, changing an organization’s DNA is extraordinarily difficult. How can a company that has always focused on profit balance the two aims? It takes upending the existing business model. Not surprisingly, researchers have consistently found that companies are quick to abandon social goals in the quest for profitability.
Grameen Veolia Water’s social and financial goals inevitably came into conflict.
Yet some enterprises successfully pursue both. The U.S. outdoor-clothing company Patagonia, for example, which initially prioritized financial goals, has come to pursue social good more seriously over time. Others began with social goals but must earn revenue to survive. Grameen Bank, the Nobel Prize–winning microlender in Bangladesh, is an iconic example. We’ve spent a decade studying how socially driven businesses succeed, and what we’ve learned from in-depth qualitative studies and quantitative analyses may prove useful to traditional companies that want to adopt a dual purpose.
Our research reveals that successful dual-purpose companies have this in common: They take an approach we call hybrid organizing, which involves four levers: setting and monitoring social goals alongside financial ones; structuring the organization to support both socially and financially oriented activities; hiring and socializing employees to embrace both; and practicing dual-minded leadership. Taken together, these levers can help companies cultivate and maintain a hybrid culture while giving leaders the tools to productively manage conflicts between social and financial goals when they emerge, making the endeavor more likely to succeed.
by Julie Battilana, Anne-Claire Pache, Metin Sengul, & Marissa Kimsey
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