Hybrid organisations: between state and market

Abstract

Government agencies are no longer the sole provider of public services. Governments make use of commercial companies for the provision of public services and public sector service providers are now also expected to embrace private sector management techniques, to become more outgoing and responsive and to engage in the market place. They now '(1) involve a variety of stakeholders, (2) pursue multiple and often conflicting goals and (3) engage in divergent or inconsistent activities' (Mair et al., 2015, p. 714). By doing so, they have become hybrid organisations, 'heterogeneous arrangements, characterized by mixtures of pure and incongruous origins, (ideal) types, "cultures", "coordination mechanisms", "rationalities", or "action logics"' (Brandsen et al., 2005, p. 750). These hybrid organisations include a mixture of the characteristics of societal sectors, different modes of governance and institutional logics.

Ambidextrous sustainability, organisational structure and performance in hybrid organisations

“…As a result, hybrid organisations describe the phenomenon rather than the type of organisation (Thomasson, 2009). The differences that distinguish one hybrid from another can vary and have been conceptualised by many scholars (see Bozeman, 1987;Billis, 2010;Dahl and Lindblom, 1953;Denis et al, 2015;Karr e, 2020). As such, there is a combination of characteristics (Rajala et al, 2020) which provokes complexity, ambiguity (Thomasson, 2009) and tension (Skelcher and Smith, 2015) in hybrid organisations.…”

“…In the classical understanding of osmosis, molecules' movement through a permeable membrane driven by a difference in osmotic pressure leads to a new concentration of a given solution(s) (Cath et al , 2006). Similarly, hybrid organisations can be understood as a sum of the merger between the for-profit and the not-for-profit sector; these pressures can lead to various dilutions of the organisational form (Karré, 2020; Billis, 2010; Thomasson, 2020; Bozeman, 1987). Therefore, there is no natural or equitable balance, as such hybrid organisations might be thought of as all types of organisations between public and private domains (Kickert, 2001).…”

“…Therefore, there is no natural or equitable balance, as such hybrid organisations might be thought of as all types of organisations between public and private domains (Kickert, 2001). However, according to Billis (2010) and Karré (2020), hybrid organisations should not be considered a distinct dichotomy, but rather as separate organisational logics. As a result, hybrid organisations describe the phenomenon rather than the type of organisation (Thomasson, 2009).…”

“…Finally, “socially responsible business” and “social enterprises” are in the middle of the spectrum; within the category of social enterprises, between the two extremes, are Swedish municipal corporations [1] which “are located in a twilight zone, being both private in one sense, acting according to the Swedish Companies Act, and public in another sense, oriented towards fulfilling the needs of the municipal citizenry” (Collin et al , 2009, p. 141). Therefore, while these corporations might not be considered hybrid in terms of ownership, they are an example of hybrid organisations that combine public non-profit and private for-profit characteristics [2] (Billis, 2010; Grossi and Thomasson, 2015; Karré, 2020; Thomasson, 2020), which according to Johanson and Vakkuri (2017), can be subject to public and private forms of social and financial control and may be characterised by goal incongruence and competing institutional logics.…”

Hybridity as a Result of the Marketization of Public Services: Catalyst or Obstruction for Sustainable Development? Deductions from a Study of Three Hybrid Waste Management Organizations in The Netherlands

“…While sustainability and sustainable development are the main reasons for establishing social enterprises, under the new public management logic which was at play behind the marketization of public services, hybridity is mainly seen from an entrepreneurial standpoint as a way to cut cost and to increase the quality of service provision though running government agencies as if they were enterprises from the business world [8,29]. The main advantage of such an approach is that "operating in institutional interstices and combining multiple logics (i.e., considering and adhering to multiple prescriptions) might open up opportunities, as organizations can access broader sets of resources and expand their practices, which allows them to be innovative, to create new products and services and to pioneer new ways or organizing" [14].…”