Matthew G. Grimes

Strategic Sensemaking within Funding Relationships: The Effects of Performance Measurement on Organizational Identity in the Social Sector:

Researchers claim that social entrepreneurship represents a new phenomenon within the social sector. Their studies often distinguish social entrepreneurs according to their emphasis on tracking and measuring their performance. By applying sense making theory to three case studies of funding relationships within the social sector, this study finds that organizations within the social sector employ performance measurement not just as a means of accountability, but also as a tool for making sense of social entrepreneurship as an organizational identity. As such, the article refocuses scholarly attention on social entrepreneurship as a socially constructed phenomenon.

Standing Out and Fitting In: Charting the Emergence of Certified B Corporations by Industry and Region

To fulfill their economic and social missions, it is imperative yet challenging for hybrid ventures to demonstrate legitimacy (fitting in) while simultaneously projecting distinctiveness (standing out). One important means for doing so is by adopting and promoting the recent B Corporation certification. Drawing on a comprehensive analysis of the emergence of this certification, we argue that when it comes to promoting their businesses, hybrid ventures should not adopt a one size fits all approach. Rather, their promotion strategies need to be adapted to their specific contexts. We theorize and develop a typology of certification promotion strategies for hybrid ventures based on the relative prevalence of other hybrid ventures in the same regions and industries. We close by articulating why the B Corp movement is a rich and underexplored context for scholarship on hybrid ventures, and highlight several promising future research directions.