How Hybrids Manage Growth and Social-Business Tensions in Global Supply Chains : The Case of Impact Sourcing

This study contributes to the growing interest in how hybrid organizations manage paradoxical social-business tensions. Our empirical case is ‘impact sourcing' - hybrids in global supply chains that hire staff from disadvantaged communities to provide services to business clients. We identify two major growth orientations - ‘community-focused' and ‘client-focused' growth - their inherent tensions and ways that hybrids manage them. The former favors slow growth and manages tensions through highly-integrated client and community relations; the latter promotes faster growth and manages client and community relations separately. Both growth orientations address social-business tensions in particular ways, but also create latent constraints that manifest when entrepreneurial aspirations conflict with the current growth path. In presenting and discussing our findings, we introduce pre-empting management practices of tensions, and the importance of geographic embeddedness and distance to the paradox literature