Is Law Normalizing Hybrid Organizations? Guidelines from Multi-purpose Corporations

International audienceAmong other challenges, hybrid organizations face a legal one as the law divides organizations into nonprofit and for-profit structures. For a few years however, new legal forms of enterprises have emerged, whose claim is to overcome this challenge: multi-purpose enterprises, such as the Benefit Corporation. Their very existence directly questions the necessity of such legal categorization, and we argue that behind the legal way to solve the challenge, it proposes a managerial model through the specification of the corporate purpose. From this model, we derive innovative guidelines to create and manage hybrid organizations. Conversely, we argue that management research on hybrid organizations may open new avenues to contribute to the development of appropriate legal structures for hybrid organizations