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The challenge of building a favourable reputation for social businesses

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Purpose: The purpose of this study is to better understand the challenge of building and managing a favourable organisational reputation for social businesses in light of the complex relations between organisational identity, paradoxical tensions and organisational reputation.
Design/Methodology/Approach: This paper combines deductive and inductive approaches. Deductively, the categorisation of Smith and Lewis (2011) was used to identify various types of paradoxical tensions in social businesses. An inductive bottom-up research strategy was also applied, collecting data from a 90-minute 'open shbowl' with six managers and advisers of Israeli social businesses (and approximately 40 undergraduate and graduate students serving as 'observers'), and 8 interviews with managers and communication professionals of social businesses.
Findings: Managers of social businesses that are hybrid-identity organisations face a challenge when trying to build a consistent hybrid identity, thus managing reputation and paradoxical tensions using holistic and dynamic 'both-and' or 'more-than' approaches.
Limitations: The small sample used in this study (an open shbowl method consisting of only six participants, in addition to 8 interviews) doesn't enable generalisability, and therefore should be seen as a benchmark for future studies that are larger and include additional methods. In addition, this study might well be culturally biased, because it takes place in only one country.
Implications and Contribution: Referring to the theoretical model of HuangHorowitz (2015) that stresses the importance of achieving consistency in identity in order for an organisation to succeed and have a favourable reputation, the ndings reveal that social businesses experience a more complex process of identity formation when trying to build a consistent hybrid identity, using various holistic and dynamic approaches. From a practical perspective managers of hybrid-identity organisations might nd it useful to explore how various holistic and dynamic approaches might help them to overcome internal and external paradoxical tensions and manage organisational reputation.

Keywords: ORGANISATIONAL IDENTITY; PARADOX THEORY; REPUTATION MANAGEMENT; SOCIAL BUSINESSES

Document Type: Case Report

Affiliations: The Max Stern Yezreel Valley College, Israel

Publication date: March 1, 2021

This article was made available online on November 10, 2021 as a Fast Track article with title: "The challenge of building a favourable reputation for social businesses".

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