P04 SIG Governing and Managing Hybridity – Between Promises and Pitfalls

Panel chairs

Corresponding chair: Jarmo Vakkuri, Tampere University (jarmo.vakkuri@tuni.fi)

Chair for review group: Jan-Erik Johanson, Tampere University

Co-chairs:

Marieke van Genugten, Radboud University, Nijmegen

Giuseppe Grossi, Kristianstad University and Nord University 

Philip Marcel Karré, Erasmus University Rotterdam 

Mirko Noordegraaf, University of Utrecht 

Ulf Papenfuß, Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen 

Governance forms in-between public and private spheres have become more common and influential in society. Likewise, scholarly attention for hybridity, hybrid governance, hybrid organizations, hybrid management, and hybrid professionalism has increased. What all these manifestations of hybridity have in common, is that they mix inherently contradictory institutional logics and value-creation mechanisms. However, current research is not yet totally successful in theorizing the most important aspects of hybrid societal governance: why and how do different institutional logics within hybrids sometimes contradict and collide impeding organizational management and governance, while they at other times may promote social and environmental sustainability and generate public, market and social value via collaborative designs and practices?

The aim of this SIG is to join researchers from traditionally separate areas of study to have an open debate on governing and managing hybridity in society, aimed at dealing with complex societal issues. This panel investigates how hybridity contributes to but also impedes desirable societal outcomes at the interface of state, market and society. While all these domains play a role in how intended social aims transpire, it is still not clear why, how, and to what effect this occurs. Hybrids, hybrid governance and hybridity appear in many forms, and at multiple levels and in different policies (Johanson & Vakkuri 2017; Koppenjan, Karré & Termeer, 2019; Billis & Rochester, 2020; Brandsen & Karré, 2021; Vakkuri et al. 2021; Besharov & Mitzinneck, 2021). For instance: universities, health care and welfare organizations, non-profits and other third sector organizations, social enterprises, municipal corporations, and state-owned enterprises are regarded as types of hybrid organizations. They all must reconcile different and often conflicting institutional logics in order to be financially, socially and ecologically sustainable. In addition, one can see hybrids at micro, meso and macro levels of societal activity, consisting of networks between business firms, public agencies, and other organizations, as well as interprofessional networks in street-level practices. Circular economy initiatives, national innovation systems and global air travel showcase such hybrid governance arrangements.

Hybridity comes with many big promises: it may be the main added value of all these arrangements, as it stimulates innovation and synergies. Yet, it is also their biggest potential pitfall, as it can lead to excessive ambiguity, accountability problems, insecurities, unclear identities, conflicts, and even value destruction. This makes hybridity and its effects an important field of research, as public service provision in a complex world is increasingly taking place within hybrid governance constellations. Pandemics, migration, social inequality, and changes in global security demonstrate the urgent need for understanding boundary-crossing activities between public, private, and civic action. Accordingly, the analytical scripts based on which we understand the public-private-civil society links in maintaining health, welfare, safety, and social inclusion may be significantly influenced by the current developments of public policies.

Hybrids are equipped to satisfy business aims, community desires and public policy goals simultaneously. In performance measurement, hybrids can apply multiple yardsticks in the evaluation of their activities. Furthermore, hybrids need to pay attention to several, often contrasting principles in navigating their goals, acquiring resources from multiple sources and legitimizing the value of their activities to customers, citizens and stakeholder groups.

This SIG panel aims to facilitate important research discussion in the public management community, as hybrid arrangements are ill understood, poorly classified and difficult to evaluate. We seek conceptual, theoretical, and empirical papers assessing the developments of hybrid arrangements. We also encourage novel inter-disciplinary perspectives to understanding hybridity in different contexts of institutions, organizations and professions, but also policies, management, evaluation, and accounting (for more details, see https://www.irspm.org/interest-groups/governing-managing-hybridity). The topics of the papers may be associated with, but are not limited to the following:

• Shared ownership between public and private owners in different settings.
• Tensions for governance, accounting and accountability practices in different types of hybrid organizations, such as municipally owned and state-owned enterprises, quasi non-governmental organizations (quangos) and social enterprises.
• Impact of hybridity on strategies, performance management and value conflicts of service delivery systems.
• Goal incongruence and other effects of mixing different institutional logics in the same organization or in a larger network.
• Variety in the sources of funding for societally important activities.
• Digital transformation facilitating new hybrid interactions between citizens, government and the business sector.
• Crisis and turbulence shaping the identity of hybrid governance and organizations, also in interorganizational and interprofessional networks.
• The role of public managers, as well as professionals in creating understanding on hybridity and hybrid governance.
• Collaborative forms of governance as responses to deal with the problems of institutional hybridity.
• Financial and non-financial forms of control in the hybridized service delivery such as new regulatory practices and developments in co-regulation.