Search results

As complex, intractable social problems continue to intensify, organizations increasingly respond with novel approaches that bridge multiple institutional spheres and combine forms, identities, and logics that would conventionally not go together, creating hybridity. Scholarly research on this phenomenon has expanded in tandem, raising questions about how the concept of organizational hybridity can maintain analytical clarity while accommodating a diverse range of empirical manifestations. Reviewing and integrating extant literature, the authors argue that to achieve both analytical rigor and real-world relevance, research must account for variation in how hybridity is organizationally configured, temporally situated, and institutionally embedded. The authors develop a framework that captures this heterogeneity and discuss three key implications for hybridity research: drawing on multiple theoretical lenses, examining varied empirical contexts, and adopting multi-level and dynamic perspectives.

Purpose: This chapter aims to study the organizational challenges that arise from a hybrid character of organizations. Using a taxonomy of hybridization, based on the societal triangle, we provide a more comprehensive understanding of challenges that different archetypes of hybrid organizations face. This research focuses on enterprises providing private goods. Methodology/Approach: First, a taxonomy of hybridity is introduced based on the societal triangle of state, market, and society. Based on a literature search, we selected 75 articles to determine the main organizational challenges for the four hybrid archetypes. The organizational challenges are clustered in five themes: mission and balancing divergent goals, leadership, hiring and employee involvement, accounting and financial issues, and future outlook. The themes are discussed with 17 case organizations including social-oriented enterprises (SEs), as well as profit-driven enterprises that have moved toward different levels of hybridity. Findings: Our findings emphasize that different kinds of hybrid organizations face different kinds of challenges but also handle them differently. For SEs, the main challenges are related to financial value creation and future outlook, while for profit-oriented enterprises, the main struggles are related to leadership, employee involvement, and balancing divergent goals. Research Limitations/Implications (if applicable): This study is of an explorative nature, focusing on four hybrid archetypes and using broadly defined themes. Future research could involve all hybrid archetypes and define the challenges more succinctly. Originality/Value of Paper: Hybrid enterprises are usually classified according to typologies based on at least two different ways of thinking (“logics”). This paper uses a taxonomy based on the societal triangle which brings analytical clarity when defining hybridity and identifying challenges. Next to that we discuss organizational challenges with 17 organizations from different hybrid archetypes. The results show that depending on the archetype, organizations face different challenges and also handle these challenges differently.

Numerous of today's public sector organisations (PSOs) can be characterised as hybrids. Hybridity is caused by different (at times conflicting) demands that stem from the institutional environment, which is likely to affect performance measurement in these organisations. This paper focuses on the relationship between hybridity and organisational performance, which has so far not been studied in detail.

Based on a literature review (final sample of 56 articles), the authors systematise performance dimensions alongside the pillars “economy”, “efficiency”, “effectiveness” and “(social) equity”. The article summarises results in a framework for measuring performance in hybrid PSOs. The authors outline strategies as to how public managers can tailor frameworks to the requirements and idiosyncrasies of organisations.

Since hybrid PSOs combine logics from different administrative models (Weberian bureaucracy, market-capitalism and democracy), so need their organisational performance measurement systems. Potential synergies from and frictions between the different performance dimensions related to the four pillars are discussed.

This is the first literature review on performance dimensions and their application in hybrid PSOs. The distilled “hybrid performance measurement framework” can be scrutinised and further refined in future research.

Non-profit organisations are moving from being permeated with social institutional logics to becoming increasingly influenced by market logics. These organisations thereby have to cope with multiple, often conflicting, logics. The existing literature on hybrid organisations has investigated the consequences of multiple logics, focussing in particular on the conflicts and power struggles between the agents of different logics. This paper aims to examine a social enterprise (SE), which in recent years has experienced a shift towards market logics while being firmly grounded in a non-profit social logic.

This paper is a qualitative, single-case case study of a SE based on interviews and observations.

The paper investigates how this hybrid organisation experienced and responded to an organisational environment marked by multiple institutional logics. Unlike the subjects of many previous studies, the organisation managed to accommodate and assemble the logics in an unproblematic symbiosis. A strong ideological congruence across institutional logics appears to play the main role in spanning the boundaries between institutional logics. Furthermore, organisational structures advocating decentralisation, autonomy and transparency appear to be important facilitators of the integration of diverse logics.

This paper contributes to the literature on hybrid organisations and SEs and aids practitioners in such organisations. It suggests that organisational decentralisation, autonomy and transparency facilitate the integration of multiple logics – especially if ideological congruence exists between the actors of different institutional logics. The findings indicate that ideological congruence enhances tolerance towards different approaches and increases the willingness to integrate diverse logics.

This paper explores the characteristics and organisational attributes of hybrid non‐profit organisation (NPO)/public sector settings to identify the particular challenges presented for performance management and to further explore the extent to which such characteristics and attributes might impinge on a move to “performance governance” as a performance framework ideal type.

A preliminary case study of an Irish NPO/public sector hybrid organisation was used to ground a review of NPO and public sector performance management concepts and theoretical developments. The review focused on the implications of organisational characteristics/attributes of the hybrid case study organisation for performance management.

Five organisational characteristics/attributes are identified as central to the understanding of the challenges for performance management in such settings: inter‐stakeholder relationships; tensions across priority objectives; culture and institutional clashes; power distribution; and interdependent stress. Further, it is suggested that while the adoption of collaborative public sector models suggests a move toward performance governance, the performance challenges identified in the hybrid setting give rise to particular barriers to any substantive movement in that direction.

Performance of NPO/public sector hybrid organisations has only relatively recently attracted the attention of researchers. The paper contributes to this emerging area by identifying certain organisational characteristics/attributes particular to such hybrids that are critical to understanding the challenges for performance management in such settings.

The aim of this paper is to present findings from the research project “Oscar – Value for Owners and Users of Buildings” and investigate two research questions: What in early-phase planning of real estate projects and facilities management creates value for owners and users of buildings? Do respondents in private enterprises, public administrations and hybrid organizations have different priorities during early-phase planning of buildings and facilities management concerning which factors creates value for owners and users of buildings?

This study is based on a national survey (N = 837) among Norwegian owners and users of buildings where the respondents report their emphasis on economic, social, environmental and physical aspects during early-phase planning of buildings. The data have been analysed through descriptive statistics, ranking of means and one-way ANOVA supplemented with bootstrapping.

Many Norwegian owners and users of buildings emphasize short-term financials and seem to overlook recent research concerning what creates long-term value such as life-cycle planning and the buildings’ elasticity, flexibility, generality. Respondents employed by private enterprises seem to have shorter time horizon than respondents employed by hybrid organizations and public administrations.

Further empirical research in Norway and preferably also in other countries, based on surveys with large random samples of respondents is needed to establish whether it is possible to generalize this study’s findings.

Increased emphasis during early-phase planning of buildings on aspects creating long-term value can significantly increase the buildings’ value creation for owners and users. This article indicates some attention areas and possible strategies during early-phase planning to improve the long-term value creation for owners and users.

This is an empirical study (national survey) with particular emphasis on how early-phase planning of buildings can contribute to value creation for users and owners during the buildings’ use phase.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the content of the sustainability reports of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the factors influencing the sustainability information they disclose.

Drawing upon the literature on sustainability disclosure, institutional logics and hybrid organizations, several hypotheses were deduced. By means of a quantitative content analysis, the sustainability disclosure index of 45 Swedish SOEs was calculated. Statistical analyses were conducted to test which variables affected the sustainability disclosures of the selected SOEs.

The findings reveal that only state ownership and corporate size significantly affect SOEs’ sustainability disclosures. Fully state-owned SOEs disclose less sustainability information than partially state-owned SOEs. Large SOEs disclose more sustainability information than small SOEs. However, there are weak indications that having a public policy assignment (PPA) (activity) negatively influences environmental sustainability disclosures, and that having a majority of female directors on the board decreases the total sustainability information disclosed. In addition, the statistical analyses show that having state representatives on the board and being profitable may positively affect the disclosures.

Accountability is particularly important in SOEs, and their complex hybrid nature has an impact on sustainability disclosures in a surprising way. State ownership and control do not necessarily imply an increased amount of sustainability disclosure.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how hybrid organisations combine institutional logics to tackle complex social needs.

A multiple case study design was followed, and cases were selected using a two-staged sampling process. Using qualitative analysis, the mechanisms through which logics are selected, prioritised and get integrated in the strategies and practices of these organisations are illustrated.

The study contributes to the literature on hybrid organisations and their ability to address social problems in two important ways. First, the paper reveals through the concept of institutional rationality why market-based organisations emerge to address complex social needs in a complex institutional context. Second, the study demonstrates that there is heterogeneity in how logics are blended externally in their strategies and in how logics are integrated internally within the organisation.

All the cases are selected from India; hence the possibility that the findings are valid only for countries with similar institutional and socio-economic contexts cannot be negated.

The policy implication is that if business organisations should embrace social goals substantively, a regulation in the form of CSR is not enough. Instead, there should be institutional provisions to promote such hybrid organisational forms where alternative logics such as community, profession, etc., are part of the core logics of the organisation.

This study connects the strategic choices of organisations with their institutional logics’ configuration in the Indian context.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role played by turbulent environments in the evolution of hybrid (i.e. multi-party, cross-sector) partnerships for regional innovation. Although extant research suggests that organizations decide to participate in such partnerships to cope with their turbulent environments, little is known about how actual perceptions of turbulent environments influence the setup and evolution of a partnership.

The qualitative study adopts a longitudinal design to investigate the evolution of a cross-sector regional innovation partnership between ten very different organizations. With the help of the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) model proposed by Bennett and Lemoine (2014a), the authors study the relation between partners’ initial perceptions of environmental turbulence and the models adopted for the partnership throughout its lifecycle (emergent, brokering and platform).

The authors show that partners’ intentions to solve perceived environmental turbulence through collaboration can have the unexpected consequence of triggering perceived turbulence inside the collaboration itself. Specifically, the authors show that perceived partnership VUCA at each stage is a result of partners’ attempts to cope with the perceived VUCA in the previous stage.

The study highlights a set of common traps that both public and private organizations engaged in hybrid partnerships might fall into precisely as they try to lower VUCA threats in their environments.

The work accounts for the relationship between external and internal perceptions of VUCA in hybrid partnerships for regional innovation, and, in particular, provides a better understanding of what happens when organizations choose to enter hybrid partnerships in order to deal with perceived threats in their environments.

The discussion about public sector performance is still present today, despite the profound research that has already tried to address this subject. Furthermore, theory links negative effects on organizational performance with increased levels of organizational complexity. However, literature thus far did not succeed to put forward a successful theory that explains why and how public organizations became increasingly complex. To answer this question, we argue that increased organizational complexity can be explained by viewing public organizations as the hybrid result of different institutional logics, which are shaped by various management views. However, former research mainly concentrated on the separate study of management views such as traditional public management (TPM), NPM, and post-NPM. Although appealing, research that approaches hybridity from this perspective is fairly limited.

We conducted a literature review in which we studied 80 articles about traditional public management, NPM, and post-NPM.

We found that these management views essentially differ on the base of three fault lines, depending on the level of the organizational culture. These fault lines, according to the management view, together result in nine dimensions. By combing dimensions of the different management views, we argue that a public organization becomes hybrid. Furthermore, in line with findings of contingency theory, we explain the level of hybridity might depend on the level of tight coupling for a given organization. Finally, we developed propositions that explain hybridity as the result of isomorphic forces, organizational change, and organizational resistance to change and that link hybridization with processes of selective coupling.

The value of this chapter lies in its real-life applicability.