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To fulfill their economic and social missions, it is imperative yet challenging for hybrid ventures to demonstrate legitimacy (fitting in) while simultaneously projecting distinctiveness (standing out). One important means for doing so is by adopting and promoting the recent B Corporation certification. Drawing on a comprehensive analysis of the emergence of this certification, we argue that when it comes to promoting their businesses, hybrid ventures should not adopt a one size fits all approach. Rather, their promotion strategies need to be adapted to their specific contexts. We theorize and develop a typology of certification promotion strategies for hybrid ventures based on the relative prevalence of other hybrid ventures in the same regions and industries. We conclude by articulating why the B Corporation movement is a rich and underexplored context for scholarship on hybrid ventures, and highlight several promising future research directions.

Research shows that the majority of investors, consumers and even younger consumers who are interested in social responsibility are unaware of B Corps. Companies spend significant time and money to obtain B Corp status that B Lab, the non-profit that certifies companies, wants to use as a force for good. Using signaling theory and corporate communication theory, the study examines whether B Corps market their B Corp status effectively on B Corps' social media sites to determine whether brand equity is being built there for the B Corp label by the B Corp companies themselves.

The authors content analyzed social media activity of 100 randomly selected US B Corps ranging in size and industry type over a two-month period on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. The sample was selected from the listing of the B Corporations on the B Lab website using a skip interval method. The authors searched for preselected keywords within two main categories, one directly mentioning B Corps (such as B Corp logo and B Corp name), and another discussing company social responsibility activities that directly relate to what B Corps do but did not mention the B Corp name.

The study finds that half of the B Corps had no social media presence. Of those who were active on social media, most B Corps did not mention B Corp status while many of the B Corps discussed social responsibility activities that directly talked about workers, environment, community, and governance, the areas that B Corp certification covers.

The study indicates that reverse decoupling might better explain communication of B Corp certification on social media than signaling theory. The finding is consistent with more recent research on certifications that shows that obtaining certifications by companies does not have to be followed by marketing certificates even when that could be beneficial. On the other hand, communication of general pro-social claims is consistent with the assumptions of the signaling theory and often used by B Corps. The study suggests why companies market general claims but not a B Corp label. Findings also suggest that when promoting the B Corp label is not done, a firm's internal values are not being expressed externally but when social responsible activities are promoted, a firm's internal values are being expressed externally. The research points to a missed opportunity for B Corps that spend significant resources to get certified. Future studies should employ larger samples with and international companies and venture into other forms of marketing through which B Corp status may be conveyed.

B Corps can easily connect information on the socially responsible activities of B Corps with B Corp status on social media and reap the benefits of B Corps by creating equity for B Corp label on multiple levels. This would also help B-Lab that strives to develop a stronger brand for the B Corps' certification. When consumers know what B Corp stands for, consumers are willing to pay premium prices. Investors are also increasingly interested in companies that care for stakeholders and the environment and are governed in transparent and socially responsible ways.

B Corps are described by the B-Lab as a “force for good” that benefits communities, environment and society. Understanding how certifications such as B Corps are communicated to the public and improving how they are communicated can help businesses reap more benefits from B Corps' socially responsible activity and help consumers and investors become educated about such companies so that B Corps can support them. This is important as B-Corps certification is still not well known. Marketing B Corp certification more effectively can help develop a wider and stronger network of businesses that want to do good, investors that want to found socially responsible companies and consumers who want to buy from B Corps. To create such a marketplace B Corps need to be better marketed online.

The study shows that the authors cannot assume that the certifications that companies obtain, often using significant resources and potentially offering many benefits for building brand equity, will be communicated to the stakeholders to reap these benefits. The study provides possible reasons for why companies may not market such endeavors. The study questions assumptions implicit in signaling theory and by using reverse decoupling the study explains why companies may pursue certifications but not market that the companies obtain them even when pro-social certifications have a great potential to differentiate a company among stakeholders that look for socially responsible firms. The study questions what this means for creating a change in business to become a “force for good.”

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the value of the Certified B Corporation (B Corp) structure for a long-term commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR) achievements. Organizations of all sizes are now focusing on commitment to achieving social purposes beyond philanthropy and on reporting their CSR performance as a means of accountability.

The authors studied 45 Founding Certified B Corps to check how many had maintained their certification by filing B Impact Reports with B Lab, how many Impact Reports they had filed and if the reports showed progress toward CSR goals.

The results showed that all Founding B Corps submitted multi-year B Impact Reports, made progress toward CSR goals, maintained their commitment to a social contribution and made profit from 2010 to 2015. The B Impact Reports identified their goals and progress in the five Impact areas that were then assessed by B Lab.

The Certified B Corp structure can be confidently used by small companies that desire to do good and want an outside assessor to help establish CSR goals and provide a method for accountability. The reports are published on the B Lab Web site, providing an additional means of publishing CSR accomplishments.

This research provides information for those businesses, particularly small ones, that wish to establish their commitment to CSR in a public way and are certified by a third-party assessor.

This chapter outlines the nascent history of the Benefit Movement, discusses the theoretical implications that predict the long-term success of movement goals, and provides recommendations for firms who seek to safeguard practices of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The chapter provides an overview of Benefit forms and describes the indicators of Movement success. For the Benefit Movement to achieve success, it must establish legal options in all 50 states for Benefit incorporation, pave the way for both publicly and privately held organizations to incorporate, and mobilize diverse organizational actors with high levels of commitment to sustain contention for Movement goals. The chapter provides a framework to understand how the Movement can achieve its goal of safeguarding the effective practice of CSR within firms and across the planet.

As the regulatory system begins to recognize the role of social responsibility reporting, reliable disclosure measures will be required. Issues of transparency, reliability and assurance are likely to arise as securities regulators consider whether and how to require disclosure of non-financial information. Various reporting models are presented in the case to illustrate different ways that these issues can be addressed by privately held and publicly traded corporations.

The case uses the company, Etsy, Inc., which has established itself as a publicly traded, socially responsible corporation. Etsy must decide whether it will re-incorporate as a benefit corporation in order to maintain its B Lab certification. This decision introduces students to the various measures of corporate social responsibility, the interests of the stakeholders of a corporation and the regulatory environment in which socially responsible, publicly traded corporations operate. The case uses only publicly available information.

This teaching case addresses the decision faced by Etsy, Inc. when it became a publicly traded corporation. In order to maintain its certification as a socially responsible corporation by B Lab, it would have to re-incorporate as a Delaware Benefit Corporation. In making this decision, the company had to consider various measures used for corporate social responsibility reporting and transparency and how these might affect Etsy’s stakeholders.

Undergraduate or masters level case that could be used in a business law, commercial law, legal environment or auditing course.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether B corps’ (for-profit entities whose owners voluntarily commit to conduct business in a socially responsible manner, beyond traditional CSR, that generates profits, but not at the expense of stakeholders) commitment to social issues influences two aspects of financial performance: employee productivity and sales growth.

This paper is an exploratory analysis of B corps. This paper examines B corps with B Lab’s B Impact Assessment reports and PrivCo financial data, for descriptive information. This paper also analyzes the financial impact of obtaining and reporting on excellence in both employee and consumer focus, as well as the differences in financial growth between B corps and non-hybrid peers.

Overall, results suggest that, among B corps whose treatment of employees (consumers) is recognized as an “area of excellence,” employee productivity (sales growth) is significantly higher. Additionally, sales growth is significantly higher for B corps relative to their peer, non-hybrid, matched firms.

Results from this study inform states considering the adoption of the B corp legal status – this legal status does not hinder firm profitability, but instead enhances long-term firm value while allowing firms to beneficially affect their communities, consumers, employees and the environment.

Results from this study provide important insights regarding the current paradigm shift from the traditional business focus on profit maximization to a fruitful coexistence of profits with social interests and initiatives, within a structure of dissolving national boundaries and increasingly divergent logics.

This paper provides an initial empirical examination of B corp performance.

This study identifies the factors that influence companies to obtain the B corporation certification. Drawing from institutional isomorphism, gender socialization theory, the ethics of care and social identity theory, the authors examine the impact of geographic locality, product market competitions and owners’ demographic characteristics on a firm’s decision to be a certified B Corporation.

Using two sets of data, a hand-collected sample of 743 small businesses receiving a B Corporation certification between 2007 and 2014 and a sample of 902 firms participating in a B Lab survey from 2011 to 2013, the authors examine factors that influence firms’ decision to obtain the B Corporation and their environment, social and governance (ESG) performance.

Firms in states that are democratic-leaning, have a lower hourly wage rate or have a greater religious population are more likely to be early adopters and leaders of the B Corporation movement than those in other states. On average, states with a higher unemployment rate and more democratic-leaning voters have more B Corporation certified firms in each year and over the years. Additionally, product market competition is positively associated with firms’ likelihood of obtaining B Corporation certification and their ESG scores.

This study brings new insights to the understanding of purpose-driven enterprises and factors that influence firms’ decision to go through the B Corporation verification and certification process.

This study establishes a theoretical foundation that becoming a B Corporation is a corporate social responsibility (CSR) action and shows that existing theories explaining the factors motivating companies to engage in CSR can also be applied to explain firms’ motivation to become B Corporations.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and illustrate those factors that influence successful implementation of major strategic change drawing on the example of a joint venture between two small firms in the health technology sector.

The methodological approach involves a selective review of the strategic change implementation literature in conjunction with personal reflections on the part of the lead author regarding his involvement in the development and first year of operations of this joint venture.

The authors provide an illustration of the sorts of factors that influence major strategic change implementation from the literature integrated with the findings from the focal joint venture in developing a taxonomic framework and several propositions with accompanying managerial action points to help guide the development and management of a small joint venture as one example of major strategic change implementation.

The paper provides managers with a framework that identifies the sorts of issues that need to be considered when implementing this type of major strategic change.

Building on the research program of Dillard and Brown (2015) and Dillard and Vinnari (2019), specifically related to an “ethic of accountability,” this paper recognizes accountability systems as key to how organizations conceptualize their responsibility to society. The objective is to explore how managers of hybrid organizations conceptualize responsibility and the role of accountability systems in their conceptualization.

This paper studies hybrid organizations that are for-profit entities with explicitly recognized non-economic imperatives. Semi-structured interviews are conducted with managers of organizations that pursue certification as a B-Corporation, often in conjunction with a legal designation as a benefit corporation.

Managers of the hybrid organizations evidenced a broader responsibility logic that extends beyond responsibility to shareholders. This pluralistic orientation and broader set of objectives are expressed in a set of certification standards that represent an accountability system that both enables and constrains the way responsibility is understood. The accountability system reflects a “felt” accountability to the “other” manifested, for example, as generational accountability, with the other (re)created relative to the certification standards.

Certifications and standards represent accounting-based accountability systems that produce a type of accountability in which the certification becomes the overall objective nudging out efforts to take accountability-based accounting seriously (Dillard and Vinnari, 2019). At the same time, the hybrids under study, while not perfect exemplars, incline toward an ethic of accountability (Dillard and Brown, 2014) that moves them closer to accountability-based accounting.

The findings reveal perspectives of managers embedded in hybrid organizations, illustrating their experiences of responsibility and accountability systems in practice (Grossi et al., 2019). The insights can be extended to other hybrid contexts where accountability systems may be used to demonstrate multiple performance objectives. We also recognize the irony in the need for an organization to be required to attain a special license to operate in a more responsible manner.