Do Hybrid Firms Out-Provide Traditional Business Structures? An Examination of Prosocial Behavior in North Carolina Firms

Abstract

With the rise of social enterprises has come a push for formal hybrid legal forms. Hybrid structures formalize a for-profit model with a social mission but carry no tax benefits. Using the case of North Carolina, this article examines a sample of formal hybrid firms and variation in their prosocial practices compared with informal social enterprises and traditional for-profit and nonprofit entities. Using firm-level survey data, Poisson estimations reveal that formal hybrid firms are associated with additional production-related prosocial practices as compared with traditional for-profits, informal social enterprises with both for-profit and nonprofit structures, and traditional nonprofits. This study contributes to the literatures on organizational identity and prosocial behavior as well as to the field of social enterprise by offering a comparison of formal and informal hybrid identification with a relatively large sample quantitative analysis.