Understanding What Kind of Social Enterprise You Are: A Typology Based on Outcomes
I count myself particularly fortunate to be part of a group of academics in social enterprise called SESAW (Sophie Bacq's SE Doc Seminar Alumni) — which has created an incredible network of global social enterprise researchers who are working hard to expand knowledge. One of those legends is Georgios Polychronopoulos, and so I was eager to read his (co-authored by G., Lukeš, M., Sansone, G., Agrawal, A., Ulrich-Diener, F., & Šlapáková Losová, V.) newest publication.
The paper, published in the Journal of Management Studies, is titled: Outcome-Based Typology of Social Enterprises: Interlacing Individual Transformation, Capital Provision, and Societal Influence (it’s open access) and takes a different approach to understanding social enterprises than we often see. Instead of looking at how social enterprises are structured or funded, the researchers examine what kinds of outcomes they actually produce. We often default to thinking of social enterprises in broad terms like "social impact" or "creating change," but these can be frustratingly vague when you're trying to be strategic about what your organisation actually does and where it should focus
The research is based on 49 social enterprises across 10 countries — Austria, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States, spanning everything from clean water projects to fashion to food waste reduction. No Irish cases, but I won’t hold it against you Georgios! In anycase I think the framework they develop feels highly applicable to our context.
Three Dimensions of Social Enterprise Outcomes:
The researchers identified three distinct dimensions of outcomes that social enterprises create:
Individual Transformation: This is about changing behaviours, attitudes, and values through direct engagement with people. Think mentoring programmes that shift how young people see their possibilities (like Active Connections) , or initiatives that change consumer habits around sustainability (like Education for Sustainability). These focus on bottom-up change, working person by person to shift mindsets.
Capital Provision: This covers providing tangible and intangible resources to targeted groups, such as, physical capital (products, property, infrastructure), financial capital (income support, cost reduction), human capital (skills, education, knowledge), and social capital (networks, connections). Many of us would recognise this as the bread and butter of social enterprise work: providing something people need but can't otherwise access.
Societal Influence: This is about changing the broader environment, influencing social norms, supporting or initiating social movements, and engaging in policy processes. These are top-down change, working at the level of systems and structures rather than individuals.
Each, essentially, represent fundamentally different theories of change. And most social enterprises, the research found, combine them in different ways.
Seven Types of Social Enterprise
Based on how social enterprises combine these dimensions, the researchers identified seven distinct types:
Single-dimension types:
Instructive SEs focus purely on individual transformation, their goal is in changing how people think and behave
Provisioning SEs focus on capital provision, their goal is delivering resources and services
Activistic SEs focus on societal influence, their goal is on advocacy, awareness, and policy change
Two-dimension types:
Enabling SEs combine capital provision with individual transformation, providing resources while also working to change behaviours and capabilities (this was the most common type in the study). Sensational Kids is an example of this, where they provide savings to families through subsidised services and one-to-one services to children.
Institutional SEs combine capital provision with societal influence, delivering services while also pushing for systemic change. Food Cloud is a great example here in Ireland, where surplus food is redistributed but also they strongly advocate for the reduction of food waste, pushing for policy reforms in how the Irish government approaches food security.
Emancipatory SEs combine individual transformation with societal influence, empowering individuals while advocating for broader change. Specialisterne is an example of this.
Three-dimension type:
Encompassing SEs work across all three dimensions simultaneously. Walk (Green Kitchen) is an example of this as they provide paid employment and capital resources, transform individuals with intellectual disabilities through training and work opportunities, and influence systemic change by demonstrating inclusive employment models in partnership with Dublin City Council.
The Trade-off Between Breadth and Depth
Here's where it gets interesting for anyone thinking about strategy. The research suggests there's a genuine tension between breadth and depth of impact.
Single-dimension social enterprises achieve focused, deep impact in their area of expertise, but may struggle to address the full complexity of the problems they're tackling. A provisioning SE that provides excellent services might find those services undermined by institutional barriers or individual attitudes they're not addressing.
Encompassing SEs that work across all three dimensions can tackle problems more holistically, but may lack the depth to fully overcome barriers in any single dimension. The paper gives the example of Too Good To Go, a food waste SE that does individual behaviour change, provides a digital platform, AND advocates for policy change. Impressive breadth, but they noted struggling to get a seat at major policy tables like COP26 because they hadn't built the deep relationships that established NGOs had developed over years.
This isn't about one approach being better than another. It's about understanding what you're equipped to do well and being realistic about your limitations.
What This Means for Social Enterprises
A few practical implications I took from this:
Know what type you are. This might sound obvious, but I think many social enterprises haven't clearly articulated which outcome dimensions they're actually working in. We often describe ourselves by sector (food, employment, environment) rather than by the type of change we're creating. Understanding your type helps clarify strategy and resource allocation.
Recognise your blind spots. Each type has characteristic challenges stemming from the dimensions they don't address. Provisioning SEs often face institutional barriers (unfavourable policies, social stigma) that limit how much their services can achieve. Instructive SEs may empower individuals who then lack the capital to act on their new mindsets. Activistic SEs may achieve policy wins that individuals can't take advantage of without additional support.
Consider partnerships strategically. If your type has inherent limitations, partnering with organisations that have complementary strengths makes sense. An enabling SE might partner with an activistic one; an instructive SE might partner with a provisioning one. The dimensions provide a framework for thinking about complementarity. Maybe this is something the New Solutions Social Innovation Hub can help curate?
Be honest about what scaling means for you. Different types scale differently. Scaling a provisioning SE often means replicating service delivery in new locations. Scaling an activistic SE might mean building a broader coalition or achieving a policy win that affects everyone. The dimensions help clarify what "more impact" actually looks like for your particular type.
Don't assume encompassing is the goal. There's a temptation to think that working across all three dimensions is the end goal, that it represents some kind of evolved state. But the research suggests encompassing SEs face real challenges with depth. Sometimes being excellent at one or two dimensions is more effective than spreading yourself across three.
Beyond Hybrid Organising
I'm a big fan of Shepherd and Williams' 2019 paper "A Framework for Exploring the Degree of Hybridity in Entrepreneurship," which expands on Battilana and Lee's foundational work on hybrid organisations. Honestly, they changed the way I think about social enterprises forever. I moved from previously seeing them as being 50/50 commercial and social — a sort of weighing scales image where both were always as important as each other. Of course that's not the case in reality; social enterprises move along the continuum based on context and time.
This paper expands that thinking even further, shifting from hybrid to multi-objective organising. And it makes sense. You're balancing so much more than just social versus commercial. There can be genuine tensions between providing immediate services (capital provision) and pushing for policy change (societal influence), both are social objectives, but they require different approaches, different timescales, and sometimes different stakeholder relationships.
Combining this with the fact that social enterprises are also often pursuing different types of scaling at the same time, it's no wonder scaling is such a tricky endeavour. You're not just managing one tension (social vs commercial) but potentially multiple tensions across your social objectives, all while trying to scale. Understanding that complexity feels like a more accurate description of what leading a social enterprise actually involves, and perhaps explains why it can feel so demanding even when you're doing everything right.
References:
Battilana, J., & Lee, M. (2014). Advancing research on hybrid organizing – Insights from the study of social enterprises. Academy of Management Annals, 8(1), 397–441. https://doi.org/10.5465/19416520.2014.893615
Polychronopoulos, G., Lukeš, M., Sansone, G., Agrawal, A., Ulrich-Diener, F., & Šlapáková Losová, V. (2025). An outcome-based typology of social enterprises: Interlacing individual transformation, capital provision, and societal influence. Journal of Management Studies, 62(6), 2387–2413. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.13138
Shepherd, D. A., Williams, T. A., & Zhao, E. Y. (2019). A framework for exploring the degree of hybridity in entrepreneurship. Academy of Management Perspectives, 33(4), 491–512. https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2018.0013