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Challenges Faced By Hybrid Models

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Benefit Corporations and the Solutions they Offer to Challenges Faced by Hybrid Models

In the past several decades, the hybrid sector has experienced rapid growth. This growth is due to several factors, and pressure for hybrid models has come from both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Since 2010 Benefit Corporations have grown rapidly and offer a unique solution to many of the challenges faced in other hybrid models.

Pressures for Hybridization
A desire to earn income so that they can rely less on philanthropic dollars has encouraged many non-profits to seek hybrid models. This internal pressure, combined with external pressures from funders to better measure their impacts and to rapidly grow has increased hybridization. …show more content…

An increasing number of for-profit corporations have made some efforts to address growing concerns for social causes through philanthropy and corporate social responsibility programs.

However, to a certain extent, for-profit corporations are limited in their capacity to address social issues as a result of their responsibility to their shareholders to maximize share value. While legal scholars continue to debate this claim, it is generally accepted that shareholders reserve the right to demand that corporations put profits above all else. The Unilever forced buyout of Ben & Jerry’s in 2000 is one notable example often cited as evidence that corporations, even those that have operated with a strong social purpose, can be forced to put share-value first. Even if, as some argue, Ben and Jerry’s was not legally obligated to sell to Unilever, the widespread perception is that they were (Page and Katz, 2015). The implications of this belief have caused socially-minded corporations to either limit in how fully they incorporate social missions into their operations or to reduce or abandon socially conscious objectives when they may reduce financial profitability. Additionally, while societal pressures have encouraged for-profit entities to pay attention to environmental and social causes, the impact of for-profit CRS programs and sustainability efforts is often questionable. More than half of all S&P 500 companies issue annual sustainability reports

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