To control or not control: A coordination perspective to scaling

Over the past few years, the question of how social enterprises can effectively scale their impact to reach people and communities has received increasing attention from various parties such as policy makers, governments, various organizational leaders and academics. In the organizational literature, the discussion has mainly revolved around appropriate strategies for scaling and has been focused on branching, affiliation and dissemination as three main organizational modes, each with their respective pros and cons. Literature to date has descriptively dealt with governance structures and the local adaptation issues under these forms. In this article, we seek to advance this line of thinking by zooming inside organizational modes adopted by social enterprises in their scaling attempts and fleshing out mechanisms at play for the functioning of these modes. For this purpose, we explore the simultaneous use of three organizational modes under one organizational umbrella in a non-profit setting, allowing for a comparative analysis of mechanisms enabling such a complex organizational structure to serve its purpose(s). Further, we discuss the appropriate control mechanisms and depth of coordination an organization attempts to achieve associated with different modes of scaling.