An Investigation of Job Attribute Preferences of Disadvantaged Beneficiaries of Hybrid Organizations

While scholarship in hybrid organizing of social enterprises has gained maturity in recent years, most existing studies have examined hybrid organizing at the internal and organizational level, and lesser is known about the tensions, balance and trade-offs within individual beneficiaries that served by social enterprises. Given the centrality of the employment of marginalized individuals served in the value creation of social enterprises, it is necessary to deepen our theoretical understanding of whether, how, and to what extent disadvantaged beneficiaries of social enterprises make employment decisions. Adopting an individual-level perspective, this study embarked on a quantitative exploration by testing how disadvantaged employees of social enterprises evaluate different job attributes and their attribute levels using the discrete choice experiment method. We found that opportunities to build social relations, employee recognition, potential earnings, career advancement opportunities, and workplace support had positive and significant influences on disabled individuals’ job preference decisions. Among all, the economic dimension had the greatest importance. This paper contributes to social entrepreneurship research by examining job attribute preferences of disadvantaged employees within the theoretical logic of hybridity as it is nested within individuals. We also stimulate a new conversation on an understudied domain of “individual preferences” within the discourse on social entrepreneurship.