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Despite an abundance of studies on hybridization and hybrid forms of organizing, scholarly work has failed to distinguish consistently between specific types of hybridity. As a consequence, the analytical category has become blurred and lacks conceptual clarity. Our paper discusses hybridity as the simultaneous appearance of institutional logics in organizational contexts, and differentiates the parallel co-existence of logics from transitional combinations (eventually leading to the replacement of a logic) and more robust combinations in the form of layering and blending. While blending refers to hybridity as an “amalgamate” with original components that are no longer discernible, the notion of layering conceptualizes hybridity in a way that the various elements, or clusters thereof, are added on top of, or alongside, each other, similar to sediment layers in geology. We illustrate and substantiate such conceptual differentiation with an empirical study of the dynamics of public sector reform. In more detail, we examine the parliamentary discourse around two major reforms of the Austrian Federal Budget Law in 1986 and in 2007/2009 in order to trace administrative (reform) paradigms. Each of the three identified paradigms manifests a specific field-level logic with implications for the state and its administration: bureaucracy in Weberian-style Public Administration, market-capitalism in New Public Management, and democracy in New Public Governance. We find no indication of a parallel co-existence or transitional combination of logics, but hybridity in the form of robust combinations. We explore how new ideas fundamentally build on – and are made resonant with – the central bureaucratic logic in a way that suggests layering rather than blending. The conceptual findings presented in our paper have implications for the literature on institutional analysis and institutional hybridity.

This chapter identifies assumptions, conceptual issues and challenges in the literature on hybrid organizations that draws on the institutional logics perspective. The authors build on the existing literature reviews as well as on an analysis of the 10 most cited and 10 most recently published articles at the intersection of hybrid organizations and institutional logics. The authors further draw from the literature on theory construction and theory development and growth to strengthen our analysis of this body of work and reflect upon future theoretical developments. From this analysis, the authors highlight four challenges to current research on organizational hybridity with an institutional logics lens and develop four suggestions to inspire future research. In doing so, they aim at seeding a more nuanced use of the institutional logics perspective and thereby foster the development of innovative and cumulative theory and empirical research on organizational hybridity.

Business sustainability urges firms to simultaneously address economic, ecological, and social concerns. It innately combines different potentially competing organizational elements. Therefore, sustainability represents a suitable context for the study and practice of hybridity. Based on an understanding of hybridity as a continuum, in this chapter, the author distinguish between four different forms of hybridity for business sustainability, depending on the degree of integration and autonomy of sustainability initiatives in business organizations. With ceremonial hybridity, businesses only leave the impression to pursue business and sustainability goals but focus their practices on conventional business priorities. Contingent hybridity denotes an approach where ecological and social concerns are only pursued to the extent that they align with business goals. With peripheral hybridity, firms pursue sustainability initiatives in their own right but do not integrate them with core business activities. Full hybridity puts both business as well as sustainability at the core of the organization without emphasizing one over the other. These different forms of hybridity in business sustainability are illustrated with examples from various business organizations. By characterizing different degrees of hybridity in business sustainability, the argument and the examples highlight how organizational hybridity and business sustainability can fruitfully inform one another. The author develop research opportunities for using business sustainability as a context for studying different degrees as well as the dynamics of hybrid organizing and for using different degrees of hybridity for achieving a better understanding of different pathways toward substantive business contributions to sustainable development.

Hybrid organizations face particular challenges and opportunities due to combining different logics within one organizational structure. While research on hybrid organizing has advanced considerably our understanding of how these organizations can cope with such tensions, institutional theory suggests that organizational legitimacy and success will also depend on processes that take place at the field level. We connect these two perspectives to examine how field hybridity influences organizational legitimacy. Specifically, we consider both a field’s maturity and its degree of hybridity as two important variables that determine the effects that field hybridity has on organizational legitimacy. Drawing from extant research and leveraging our empirical work in the fields of microfinance, social entrepreneurship and impact investing to provide illustrative examples, we propose a framework that considers both positive and negative effects of field hybridity on organizational legitimacy. We contribute to the literature on hybrid organizing in two ways. First, we show that hybrid organizations face different challenges and opportunities depending on the stage of development and degree of hybridity of the field they operate in. Second, we suggest that the effects of field hybridity on organizational legitimacy can be understood as trade-offs that organizations need to understand and approach strategically to leverage opportunities and mitigate challenges.

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.

As hybrid organizations become increasingly common, the authors observe that some hybrid forms are becoming institutionalized and legitimated. The authors explore the implications of the institutionalization of hybridity, addressing both the internal tensions that plague many hybrids and the external tensions stemming from evaluator assessments and stakeholder uncertainty. The authors propose that institutionalization can dampen internal tensions associated with hybridity and also facilitate legitimation and acceptance by external audiences. The authors present identity as a useful theoretical lens through which to examine these questions, as identities are born from, but also have the potential to modify, existing institutional arrangements. The authors present directions for future research at the juncture of identity, hybridity, and institutionalization, suggesting potential avenues of inquiry in this productive stream of research.

This paper aims to inform the discussion on why and how non-profit organizations can experience a hybridization process to address the criticism that would assume hybridity as an intrinsic characteristic of all organizations. Specifically, by referring to the academies of intellectuals as the non-profit setting in which investigating the emergence of hybridity takes place, this paper aims at exploring, first, to what extent this emergence could be induced by institutional conditions, and, second, which structural innovations could sustain the academies’ “motion” towards hybridity.

This paper relies on the institutional logics perspective and adopts the case study method applied to a historical context. The case under analysis is the Academy of “the Immobili”, which, in spite of its name, experienced a hybridization process in 1720 because of the decision to involve an impresario in the management of its theatre.

The findings highlight the significant role played by institutional conditions in inducing the emergence of hybridity, even in presence of internal resistance to any “motion” from the non-profit setting. Moreover, the analysis of the innovations associated with this emergence detects the intertwined action of the different decision makers involved in the hybridization process, in spite of their formal separation. These findings strengthen the conceptualization of hybridity within non-profit organizations.

Besides referring to a historical period that is still little explored in terms of hybridity within organizations, the paper focuses on an original context, i.e. academies, representing an ancient typology of cultural organizations. Therefore, the paper also provides the first insights into the hybridization process of cultural organizations from a historical perspective.

This study aims to examine different levels of consumer’s hybridity, which is gaining popularity during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

A qualitative approach was adopted using two main data collection methods: netnography and semistructured interviews. Three main communities and 20 semistructured interviews with hybrid consumers were performed to fully understand new levels of consumers’ bipolarity. Thematic analysis was used to identify groups representing different facets of new hybridity. Similarity index and co-occurrences (Jaccard coefficient) were interpreted through QDA Miner software.

Four main facets of consumers’ hybridity were highlighted during the current COVID-19 pandemic: “up vs down,” “utilitarian vs hedonic,” “impulsive vs planned” and “responsible vs irresponsible.”

These findings have practical implications for marketing managers seeking to design and to improve their branding strategies and their positioning. Businesses usually offer a coherent mix targeted to specific consumers. However, these results show that providing and highlighting some contradictions in their offerings may be interesting for consumers who are trying to cope with this pandemic.

The study extends the contemporary consumer literature by investigating paradoxical behaviors that are still fertile. The marketing literature examines consumers’ profiles as a homogeneous concept without allowing for contradictions in consumers’ preferences. Additionally, this study recognizes important changes in consumer behavior elicited by COVID-19 pandemic. It fills that research gap by examining not only “up vs down” hybridity but new levels of hybridity as well.

The purpose of this paper is to find a new conception of hybridity to set ground for further systematic research. The concept of hybrid organisations is used in many ways. This leads to confusion among scholars and the term of hybridity appears to be meaningless and useless for research and practice.

In this explorative research design, the authors conducted 11 interviews with managing directors and managers of hybrid organisations in four different countries across Europe.

Each and every organisation is hybrid but to different degrees and with different patterns. It is important to measure hybridity to give value to the term of hybrid organisations. According to input, process and output dimensions, the authors could classify possible dimensions of hybridity measurement within organisations.

The developed cube model serves as a new point of departure for hybrid organisation research and helps to build analytical types of hybrid organisations. The research has been highly explorative, and the limited number of cases researched leads to the requirement of further validation on a broader basis. In addition, the still rather conceptual state of the cube model will need further validation by means of a set of hybridity indicators.

The paper presents a way to deal with the question about what hybridity exactly is and whether hybridity is a term that has an analytical value. It also provides the first attempt to connect more analytical meaning to the concept of hybridity by suggesting an approach to concretely measure it.

This paper aims to respond to the circumstances that have made hybridity both a popular term in cultural analysis and a contested, problematic concept. It promotes the need to look at what has been dismissed in discussions of hybridity, namely, mundane and un-exotic examples of cultural mix.

This study uses a conceptual and interpretive approach to theoretical and empirical work that engages with the theme of hybridity.

The findings highlight how a celebration of hybridity has limited the ways in which the concept can be used for empirical work. It proposes the paradigm of everyday hybridity to work with practical examples of cultural hybridity.

The implications are to decentre the Western bias that has theorised hybridity without exploring how the concept is relevant to other regions, such as East Asia.

The value of this work is in providing an audit of the concept of hybridity and a working paradigm for future qualitative research.