Publications
Publications
- September 2014
- Organization & Environment
The New Heretics: Hybrid Organizations and the Challenges they Present to Corporate Sustainability
By: Nardia Haigh and Andrew J. Hoffman
Abstract
Corporate sustainability has become mainstream; reaching into all areas of business management. Yet despite this progress, large-scale social and ecological issues continue to worsen. In this article, we examine how corporate sustainability has been enacted as a concept that supports the dominant beliefs of strategic management rather than challenging them to shift business beyond the unsustainable status quo. Against this backdrop, we consider how hybrid organizations (organizations at the interface between for-profit and nonprofit sectors that address social and ecological issues) are operating at odds with beliefs embedded in strategic management and corporate sustainability literatures. We offer six propositions that define hybrid organizations based on challenges they present to the beliefs embedded in these literatures and position them as new heretics of strategic management and corporate sustainability orthodoxy. We conclude with the implications of this heretical force for theory and suggest directions for future research.
Keywords
Social Issues; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Mission and Purpose
Citation
Haigh, Nardia, and Andrew J. Hoffman. "The New Heretics: Hybrid Organizations and the Challenges they Present to Corporate Sustainability." Organization & Environment 27, no. 3 (September 2014): 223–241.