Nature-based enterprises (NBEs) have recently emerged as important actors in the delivery of nature-based solutions (NBS) to societal challenges, but little is known about the context in which they operate and the factors influencing their development. The empirical research undertaken in this study provides a first insight into the most significant barriers and enablers nature-based enterprises face in their external environment. Findings were drawn from a review of literature triangulated with a survey of 148 nature-based enterprises and interviews with the founders/CEOs of 22 NBEs. Political factors were identified as the most significant external influence, with increased awareness and incorporation of NBS into relevant policies and economic instruments seen to play a significant role in market development. Conversely, policy inconsistencies and poorly designed public procurement approaches present significant challenges. Other key influencing factors relate to financing (both public and private), lack of industry standards and impact measurement. Industry networking and access to education, training and skill development emerged as key enablers, with university collaborations highly regarded. Further in-depth research is recommended to explore indications of disparities in the levels of awareness, financing, and skills gaps across different regions of Europe and different nature-based economic activities.

How do nonprofit organizations reinvent their identities after they have accomplished all or part of their missions? This comparative case study of two Irish peacebuilding organizations explores what happens when their raison d’etre is fundamentally challenged. A successful peace process in Northern Ireland resulted in reduced support for peacebuilding organizations and a perception of mission accomplished. Conventional literature on nonprofit organizations portrays mission success as positive. We show that mission success paradoxically threatens the very existence of the organization as it may lead to member and donor dissociation. We find that mission success leads to identity ambiguity, which catalyses organizational identity work including different rhetorical strategies of self–other talk. We develop a process model illustrating competitive versus integrative approaches to organizational identity work to understand nonprofits adapting to mission success. We draw out lessons for practitioners. Focusing on a renewed mission that is consistent with the organization’s history is more important than finding a quick financial fix. Social purpose organizations can efficiently and effectively be redeployed to address new challenges, rather than recreating new organizations each time.

Digital social ventures are initiatives that intend to transformatively engage social and environmental problems through the application of digital technology and are a new phenomenon found globally. While the broad influence and consequences of disruptive digital technology are increasingly taken for granted, very little research focuses on the deliberate use of digital technology for social purpose. This study is situated within three areas of literature: disruption caused by digital innovations, the use of digital technology by social purpose organizations, and social entrepreneurship. The process of digital social venture emergence and evolution shows how flashy-sounding technological solutions develop into more modest and incrementally useful tech-supported adjuncts. A preliminary framework for conceptualizing the nature and process of digital social ventures shows how a Schumpeterian approach to social entrepreneurship as disrupting equilibrium gives way to a Hayekian approach as drawing on local, embedded knowledge to achieve incremental change.

This study provides insight into the changing normative judgements of civil society organizations over time through the concept of legitimacy. A case study of an LGBT organization in Ireland over the past 40 years shows how a process of legitimation took place in five steps: refuge, advocacy, formalization, impact, and organizational survival. The initial stigmatization of the organization’s core purpose created opportunities for social capital to grow, which, ironically, helped to initiate the process of legitimation. In the end, pragmatic legitimacy waned after the organization achieved impact and was successful in its mission. This organizational perspective on civil society and on a history of LGBT rights contributes to understanding the legitimacy of civil society organizations, actors which influence change in normative judgements over time. Treating legitimacy as both a property and a process highlights how these organizations can be simultaneously subjects of normative judgement and also agents of change.

This qualitative study explores the deinstitutionalization of peacebuilding in Ireland and how the core population of peacebuilding organizations are responding. We document organizational responses to the understudied phenomenon of deinstitutionalization—the weakening and dissipating of an institutionalized set of practices and beliefs. We rigorously map the field and population under study, illustrating the challenge and necessity of delineating a field of actors involved in a complex social process. This research contributes to understanding deinstitutionalization in two ways. First, we illustrate how organizations both adapt to and resist the challenge of deinstitutionalization. Second, organizations can act as custodians of outgoing traditions, turning to their communities and engaging in defensive institutional work, which seems to enhance their organizational survival.