Abstract
As government subsidies for nonprofit organizations (NPO) have been reduced, many NPOs have been transformed into social enterprises, resulting in a special form of organization with multiple institutional logics (Tracey et al., 2011). Existing literature has proposed frameworks that delineate types of institutional logic multiplicity within organizations (Besharov and Smith, 2014) and demonstrate the challenges and conflicts inside a social enterprise (Doherty et al., 2014). However, the transitional mechanism, which influences the degree of centrality and compatibility from a certain type of organization to another remains relatively unexplored. Taking a case study approach of four social enterprises (which were previously NPOs), this research contributes to institutional theory by revealing how government intervention, workforce composition, internal communication and focused selection have influenced centrality and compatibility during the transformation from NPO to social enterprise.