From Mission Drift to Practice Drift: Theorizing drift processes in social enterprises and beyond

Mission drift poses a real threat to social enterprises because it leads them to diverge from their main social purposes. Although various accounts of mission drift already exist in organization studies, a unifying processual account that would clarify this notion while broadening the perspective to encompass drift in relation to social issues more generally is lacking. Taking a practice-based approach, I develop a conceptualization of ‘practice drift’ in social enterprises as a process that emerges from tensions and is unintended, unnoticed and unwanted by organizational actors. A practice perspective not only helps substantiate the dynamics of mission drift in its unintended form but can also sensitize scholars to mission-neutral drift. This paper contributes to social enterprise studies by shedding light on the processual dynamics of mission drift and by introducing fine-grained distinctions between different types of drift, including partial mission drift, economically driven practice drift and mission-driven practice drift. Furthermore, it contributes a theoretical account of drift in relation to social issues that is relevant not only for social enterprises but organizations more generally. Finally, this paper identifies drift-driving and drift-blurring elements and thereby provides theoretical scaffolding that can serve to theorize the drifting of practices in a wider sense.