Towards a theory of hybrid organizations

Abstract

LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE Research Online website. This document is the author's submitted version of the book section. There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. Hybrid Organizations and the Third Sector IntroductionHybrid organizations are ubiquitous. They are international, multi-sector phenomena and their unclear sector accountability often engenders unease and distrust. And in our area of concern we appear to have stumbled into a period of intense organizational hybridity in which we appear to be drifting up the (welfare hybrid) creek not only without a paddle, but also without a reliable map. Expressed in a somewhat more scholarly fashion the first priority in the preliminary agenda of issues laid out in Chapter 1 is the need to develop 'tentative theories' (Popper, 1972) of hybrid organizations.The objective of this chapter is therefore to begin to get to grips with the agenda of questions. It is laid out as a 'building blocks' exercise and contains five parts.1. Any study of hybridity must inevitably begin by establishing the nature of the 'nonhybrid' state of the phenomenon. This first part explores the position in the public and private sectors which are more readily understood and well established than the third sector. At the heart of the model is an approach to 'ownership' in terms of decisionmaking accountability that is intended to be applicable to all three main sectors.2. This part develops a similar model for the third sector. Reflecting on previous research it is suggested that the archetypal characteristics of the Third Sector Organization (TSO) are most closely found in the associational form of organization. A new approach to membership and ownership leads to a re-evaluation of the role of some paid staff in the association.3. The third, pivotal level proposes a 'principal sector' hypothesis which is intended to resolve the paradox of strong sectors in the midst of the growth of hybrid types. The centrepiece of this part is a model of sectors and their hybrid zones.4. The final level of analysis considers the nature of hybridity in the third sector. In order to do this, the concepts of 'shallow', 'entrenched', 'organic' and 'enacted' hybrids are introduced.5. The chapter concludes with a summary and a few thoughts as to how this approach to hybridity might prove helpful in thinking about the agenda of issues from Chapter 1. Part one: Building an ideal...

Taking Your Eyes Off the Objective: The Relationship Between Income Sources and Satisfaction with Achieving Objectives in the UK Third Sector

“…Income from contracts on the other hand appears to have a positive relationship with success in achieving objectives. In terms of the model presented in section 2 this is consistent with the short term reliability of these funding sources (Jones, 2010), and closer alignment with organisation's objectives (Billis, 2010b), meaning that the additional resources available to the organisation, compensate for the additional regulatory burden imposed (Arvidson, 2009). …”

“…The theory developed in the first part of the paper suggested that both public sector contract funding and income from trading activities were imperfect sources of funding in this regard. Although public sector contracts potentially would lead to greater entrenchment of hybridisation turning TSOs into public service providers, income from trading activities could also lead to entrenched hybridisation (Billis, 2010b;Harris, 2010), but perhaps more importantly would require the Third Sector to adopt activities outside of their core competencies (McBrearty, 2007;Ellis and Gregory, 2008). Thus, the pressure to achieve the economic objective would distract and draw resources from achievement of the core social objective (Weisbrod, 1998a).…”

“…Effectively they are forced to hybridise by taking on traits of the public sector, such as, thinking about national needs as well as those of their traditional local stakeholders (Billis, 2010b;Harris, 2010). This can include pressure to increase scale to achieve efficiency gains (Cairns et al, 2007).…”

Oil and Water Rarely Mix: Exploring the Relative Stability of Nonprofit Revenue Mixes Over Time

“…However, since Hansmann's contribution, some attention has been paid in the literature to the emergence of mixed revenue forms of nonprofit which combine donative and commercial revenue (see for example Billis, 2010), in part as a response to arguments about resource dependency (Froelich, 1999) or the benefits of diversification (Carroll and Stater, 2009) and appeal to multiple stakeholder groups (Young, 2007). It would seem that mixed revenue nonprofits have become sufficiently numerous to now warrant a distinct stream of academic literature.…”

Toward a New Social Contract? The Participation of Civil Society in Swedish Welfare Policymaking, 1958–2012

“…2 With such information, I classified each organization according to all three dimensions. A few organizations straddled several categories (e.g., both advocacy and service) and can be thought of as ''hybrid organizations'' (Billis 2010). My classification is not fully capable of disclosing those types of organization, which constitutes a restriction that readers need to bear in mind when interpreting the results.…”