No One Left Behind: On The Drivers Of Hybrid Organizations’ Ability To Serve The Most Precarious

Hybrid organizations provide disadvantaged people with access to critical resources such as employment opportunities or financial services—resources from which they have been historically excluded. Despite their vital role, such organizations are increasingly criticized for not effectively reaching the individuals they were designed to serve. In this paper, we develop novel theoretical predictions suggesting that the value of specialization approaches—which have been argued to be effective in addressing the needs of specific beneficiaries in these organizations—are contingent on the degree of precarity of beneficiaries. In particular, we study the drivers of the ability of Work Integration Social Enterprises (WISEs) to help the most precarious beneficiaries reintegrate into the workforce. We argue that diversity—both in the profiles of beneficiaries recruited and the range of occupational activities that beneficiaries can perform—can enhance workforce reintegration for more precarious individuals. Drawing on data spanning over 238,000 individuals over 7 years, encompassing the entire population of beneficiaries served by a type of WISE called Associations Intermédiaires (AIs) in France during this period, we show that: i) more precarious beneficiaries are less likely to integrate into the workforce, compared to their less precarious counterparts, and ii) this penalty diminishes in AIs that are more diverse, both in terms of precarity profiles of beneficiaries and scope of their occupational activities. Overall, we provide new insights into tailoring hybrids’ strategies to foster reintegration of the most vulnerable.