The Organizational Culture of Social Enterprises: a Comparative Study

Abstract

Objectives

Using a quantitative survey-based approach, this study aims to identify an optimal framework to measure organizational culture and utilize that framework to identify cultural differences between social enterprises and traditional enterprises.

Summary

An extensive review of the literature determines that a quantitative method, assisted by qualitative methodologies, is the optimal approach to studying organizational culture, especially in comparative studies. Thus, this study opts for the Revised Organizational Practices (ROP) scale developed and verified by Verbeke (2000) on the foundation of the 1990 article by Hofstede et al. to measure the cultures of a sample of 22 companies in the United States, both social enterprises and regular companies. An analysis of the collected data confirmed that there are key cultural differences on several dimensions between of these two types of organization.

Conclusions

As several limitations related to sampling techniques and methodological drawbacks remain that raise some caution on the generalizability of the results, the value of this study lies in its ability to demonstrate the utility of quantitative culture measurement, as well as provide some general ideas on the culture and prevalent management practices in social enterprises. From these results, managerial implications for social entrepreneurs and managers in SE, along with suggestions for future research, are discussed in the conclusion of the paper.