Social Enterprise in Sub-Saharan Africa: Coherence of Social and Economic Goals

This chapter investigates the occurrence, and management, of mission drift in social enterprises (SEs) in Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia and South Africa. As hybrid organisations, SEs combine and integrate a dual mission in the form of both social and economic goals (Battilana & Dorado, 2010). Often hybrid organisations are said to be at risk of ‘Mission Drift’, losing sight of either one of the components of their organisational identity and aims (Grimes et al., 2019). Mission drift is not only evident in social enterprises but it is thought to be particularly relevant and challenging for them (Ebrahim et al., 2014). The need to effectively manage mission drift stems from the perception that social enterprises experience tension and contradiction by design, and that the dual goals are at odds with each other. Yet, this research indicates that Social Entrepreneurs in the three Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries largely reported that mission drift was not an operational challenge. In addition, there was great variation in the importance, or weighting, given by Social Enterprises to the social and economic components of their organisational mission. This contradicts theoretical expectations, and thus raises the question, “How do Social Enterprises in SSA manage their hybridity and deal with the challenge of mission drift?”.