Blended value creation in nascent social enterprises: a case of managerial recruitment and retention
Harshavardhan Reddy Kummitha, Rama Krishna Reddy KummithaPurpose
This paper discusses strategies that nascent social enterprises adopt to recruit and retain their managers.
Design/methodology/approach
We used qualitative methods and conducted 35 in-depth interviews with social entrepreneurs and managers in the Indian context. We used NVivo version 11 to analyse the themes as part of our analytical approach.
Findings
Our findings suggest that social enterprises rely on managers' prior experience and P-O fit when recruiting. Further, they also emphasise the importance of industry-specific human capital related to social and commercial missions in their prior employment. Surprisingly, our results also indicate that social enterprises prefer to recruit those with prior experience in commercial rather than social settings. As part of their retention strategies, social enterprises rely on institutionalising interpersonal and other-oriented factors related to social mission, such as caring and sharing, which requires embedding the practices of the ethic of care. Combining these findings, we propose a compassion-centred HRM practice for recruiting managers in social enterprises.
Originality/value
This study advances social enterprise and strategic HRM literatures by shifting focus from entry-level staff socialisation to the strategic agency of mid-level managers. Moving beyond descriptive application, we elaborate the theory by establishing a conditional, contingency-based framework that links commercial manager preference to specific structural boundaries: venture stage, asset scarcity and founder competence gaps. Furthermore, we theorise compassion-centred HRM as an organisation-level mechanism rather than an individual antecedent, demonstrating how institutionalised care routines act as a structural buffer that stabilises long-term retention when traditional macro-buffers are absent.