Title: Balancing financial, social and environmental values: can new ventures make an impact without sacrificing profits?

Authors: Ferran Giones; Christina Ungerer; Guido Baltes

Addresses: University of Southern Denmark, Mads Clausent Institute, Alsion 2, 6400 Sønderborg, Denmark ' HTWG Konstanz, Institute for Strategic Innovation and Technology Management, Alfred-Wachtel-Straße 8, 78462 Konstanz, Germany ' HTWG Konstanz, Institute for Strategic Innovation and Technology Management, Alfred-Wachtel-Straße 8, 78462 Konstanz, Germany

Abstract: What drives entrepreneurial action to create a lasting impact? The creation of new ventures that aim at having an impact beyond their financial performance face additional challenges: achieving economic sustainability and at the same time addressing social or environmental issues. Little is known on how these new hybrid organisations, aiming for multiple impact dimensions, organise and prioritise for their social, environmental, and financial goals. A dataset of 4,125 early-stage ventures is used to gain insights into how blended values are converted into financial, social and environmental impacts, giving shape to different types of hybrid organisations. Our findings suggest new hybrid organisations might opt to sacrifice financial impact to achieve social impact, yet this is not the case when they aim to generate environmental or sustainable impact. Therefore, the tensions and sacrifices related to holding blended values are not homogeneous across all types of new hybrid organisations.

Keywords: venture creation; hybrid organisations; blended values; social impact; environmental impact; entrepreneurship; sustainability.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEV.2020.105138

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing, 2020 Vol.12 No.1, pp.39 - 57

Accepted: 05 Feb 2019
Published online: 13 Feb 2020 *

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