Entrepreneurial teams in social entrepreneurship: when team heterogeneity facilitates organizational hybridity

The composition of teams involved in social entrepreneurship, and more particularly their heterogeneity in terms of ‘institutional logics’, has received little attention in entrepreneurship literature. This chapter highlights that when social welfare and market logics are integrated within founding teams, such hybridity is likely to infuse the whole entrepreneurial process to ultimately lead to the creation of a social enterprise as a ‘hybrid’ organization. To theorize this process, a model is proposed that examines the implications of entrepreneurial team heterogeneity in social entrepreneurship. It makes clear that complexity and dynamism, in particular with regard to individuals’ social network structure, as well as interactions between team members, are necessary to understand the impact of team composition on the entrepreneurial process. An illustrative case study is presented to demonstrate the practical relevance of the model.