Timmons' Framework

Social entrepreneurship organization is the basic unit for the implementation of social entrepreneurship activities. Some people think that it is a creative product to promote the realization of social goals, while others regard it as a new organization that engages in commercial activities only to maintain operations. However, its essence is an innovative measure to identify, evaluate and use opportunities that generate social returns to solve social problems. Non-profit social enterprises have achieved remarkable results in solving social problems through innovative business models. However, it is difficult to maintain the sustainable operation of social enterprises simply relying on charitable donations and government subsidies. Therefore, many social organizations, such as micro-credit organizations and work integration social enterprises (WISEs), are actively participating in commercial activities while pursuing social missions. Their sustainability depends on the progress of social missions as well as the realization of their commercial performance. But commercialization brings special opportunities to social enterprises and also creates new challenges. On the one hand, social enterprises are organizational innovations that conform to entrepreneurs' personal values and promote institutional changes and social progress. On the other hand, commercial and social activities are competing for resources. Members of the organization are also difficult to correctly grasp how the organization chooses altruistic pro-social motives and self-interested economic goals due to cultural differences. For hybrid social organizations, how to balance their social mission and economic goals is a key dimension of their identity.

At present, the hybrid social organization has received extensive attention from the academic community. Especially the advantages and disadvantages of its dual identity have become a controversial topic. Proponents believe that organizations rely on stable market revenues to gain economic independence and continue to pursue social missions. Opponents criticize that market income tends to distract the attention of social organizations. Task deviation (i.e. the risk of ignoring social mission in income-generating efforts) makes it difficult for them to maintain their legal status among relevant stakeholders. Dual objectives aggravate the shortage of tangible and intangible resources. It is found that social organizations providing employment for homeless people face failure when financial funds are difficult to simultaneously support the training of organization members and commercial activities that meet customer needs. A Mexican company simultaneously hosts and educates street teenagers and produces and sells agricultural products. It shows out that business and charity activities would compete for the organization's human capital, especially the CEO's time and attention . This kind of resource competition tends to weaken the organization's ability to create social value, reflecting that social mission and economic goal are mutually competitive and irreconcilable. However, now many scholars have pointed out that self-interest as the core of entrepreneurial motivation and pro-social motivation are not necessarily mutually exclusive or antagonistic. Moss et al. found that these enterprises have both normative and utilitarian characteristics through analyzing the mission statements of 104 award-winning social enterprises. Other scholars have analyzed how market-oriented social enterprises combine profit-making and non-profit entrepreneurial activities to promote the process of social change. It is also found that there is a positive correlation between independent social missions and business objectives.

Researchers have conducted a large number of qualitative analysis of the dual identity of social organizations based on different theories and perspectives. Actually, it is difficult for social enterprises to expand their scale because of their focus on value creation . Therefore, more and more researches are turning to the research on the growth and performance of social entrepreneurship organizations. At present, Stevens et al. have established the measurement dimensions of social mission and economic objectives of social entrepreneurship through high-order confirmatory factor analysis of 270 samples of social enterprises, which has laid an empirical foundation for relevant quantitative hypothesis testing. In the future, researchers can explore what strategies social organizations should adopt to balance their pursuit of social mission and economic goals, and deeply analyze how to allocate their organizational resources to achieve dual missions.