Organizational Hybridity

Perspectives, Processes, Promises

Marya Besharov, Bjoern Mitzinneck, Marya Besharov, Bjoern Mitzinneck

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781839093555
• eBook ISBN:
  9781839093562
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Social Sciences

This book contains Open Access chapters.

As complex, intractable social problems continue to intensify, organizations 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, drawing on varied theoretical lenses and exploring a widening array of empirical contexts.This edited volume takes stock of recent developments in the literature and sets a foundation for the next generation of research on organizational hybridity. It offers a multi-level, dynamic approach for capturing and explaining heterogeneity in how hybridity manifests and evolves within organizations and fields over time. The chapters included in the volume cover institutional logics, organizational identity, social categories, and paradox approaches to hybridity, and they examine settings ranging from social enterprise, microfinance, and impact investing to business sustainability, health care, and government.

Taken as a whole, the volume provides both inspiration and analytical tools for developing timely and relevant insights to address pressing societal challenges. It is essential reading for organizational scholars, as well as leaders in business, non-profit, and public sector organizations.

SECTION B:
VARIED EMPIRICAL CONTEXTS

CHAPTER 6

BUSINESS SUSTAINABILITY AS A CONTEXT FOR STUDYING HYBRIDITY

Tobias Hahn

ABSTRACT

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.

Keywords: Organizational hybridity; business sustainability; integration; autonomy; dynamic perspective; mission drift

1. INTRODUCTION

Research on organizational hybridity has been burgeoning, in particular with a focus on social enterprises (for recent reviews, see Battilana, Besharov, & Mitzinneck, 2017; Battilana & Lee, 2014; Doherty, Haugh, & Lyon, 2014). At the same time, the idea that organizations are increasingly confronted with the need to combine competing logics and imperatives is not restricted to the area of social enterprises. Business sustainability is an important example in this context, in that it mandates firms to attend to competing yet interrelated commercial, environmental, and social concerns (Hahn, Pinkse, Preuss, & Figge, 2015). Due to its rootedness in a systemic view, the inclusion of a multiplicity of diverse goals, and its long-term orientation, business sustainability comprises multiple sources of hybridity.

Building on a conceptualization of organizational hybridity as a continuum (Battilana & Lee, 2014), I distinguish between four different forms of hybridity for business sustainability. These four forms differ with regard to how strongly sustainability initiatives are integrated with core business activities (integration) and the degree to which sustainability initiatives are pursued in their own right as an end in themselves (autonomy). The spectrum of hybridity for business sustainability ranges from ceremonial hybridity (weak integration and low autonomy), over contingent hybridity (strong integration and low autonomy) and peripheral hybridity (weak integration and high autonomy) to full hybridity (strong integration and high autonomy). I use these four forms to explain different degrees of hybridity for business sustainability and illustrate them with examples from various business organizations.

The argument shows how research on organizational hybridity and business sustainability can mutually inform one another. Business sustainability offers a promising context for studying different degrees of hybridity as well as the dynamics of hybridity (Battilana et al., 2017). Moreover, business sustainability represents a context beyond ideal-typical hybrid social enterprises where scholars can study the interrelations and interplay of different sources of hybridity as well as hybridity challenges that arise from organizations combining different non-commercial concerns such as different social and ecological concerns. Hybridity can inspire research on business sustainability by offering a wider variety of pathways toward business contributions to sustainable development, including pathways that embrace tensions between different sustainability aspects thereby going beyond the predominant business case approach.

2. BUSINESS SUSTAINABILITY AND ORGANIZATIONAL HYBRIDITY

2.1. Definitional Foundations

Over the last decades, organizational hybridity has received increasing scholarly attention using different theoretical lenses (Battilana et al., 2017; Battilana & Lee, 2014; Doherty et al., 2014). In their recent review of the growing body of literature on organizational hybridity, Battilana et al. (2017) identify three main approaches within this body of literature, emphasizing hybrid organizational identities, hybrid organizational forms, and the combination of different institutional logics, respectively. Based on their review of the literature, they offer a general definition of organizational hybridity as “the mixing of core organizational elements that would not conventionally go together” (Battilana et al., 2017, p. 129). To date, organizational hybridity has predominantly been studied in the context of social enterprises, that is, firms that pursue a dual mission of financial viability and social purpose and impact (Doherty et al., 2014; Litrico & Besharov, 2018). Accordingly, social enterprises have been characterized as the ideal type of hybrid organization (Battilana & Lee, 2014). At the same time, Battilana and Lee (2014) highlight that hybrid organizing is relevant beyond the realm of social enterprises. In this context, they suggest that hybrid organizing and the degree to which organizations combine opposing elements “follow a continuum rather than a dichotomy” (p. 425). In this chapter, I argue that business sustainability offers a suitable context to study different degrees of hybridity in organizations. While sustainability mandates firms to combine oftentimes competing social and ecological concerns with commercial considerations, firms adopt and integrate sustainability challenges to different degrees.

While ambiguity about the definition of the notion of business sustainability remains (Bansal & Song, 2017; Montiel & Delgado-Ceballos, 2014; Valente, 2012), most commonly business sustainability is conceptualized as the contribution of business organizations to achieving environmental integrity, economic prosperity, and social equity (Bansal, 2005; Montiel & Delgado-Ceballos, 2014; Scherer, Palazzo, & Seidl, 2013). Moreover, and in contrast to many more practitioner-oriented definitions, scholarly definitions of business sustainability tend to agree that business sustainability does not refer to the sustainability or longevity of an individual business (Bansal, 2002; Hahn & Figge, 2011). Rather, business sustainability is rooted in a systemic view (Bansal & Song, 2017) and highlights the embeddedness of business organizations in, and their dependence on, wider overarching economic, social, and natural systems (Valente, 2012). Therefore, while firms play a key role for achieving sustainability, because they represent the productive resources of the economy (Bansal, 2002), business sustainability is a society-level concept in the sense that “individual organizations cannot become sustainable: Individual organizations simply contribute to the large system in which sustainability may or may not be achieved” (Jennings & Zandbergen, 1995, p. 1023).

2.2. Sources of Hybridity in Business Sustainability

Based on this definitional core, it becomes evident that business sustainability is an innately hybrid concept in that it mandates firms to combine opposing elements that conventionally do not go together. More specifically, business sustainability brings together organizational level practices and system-level impacts, it encompasses a multiplicity of interrelated but oftentimes competing sustainability goals, and juxtaposes competing short-term and long-term time orientations. Attending to and mixing these opposing elements may translate into firms adopting hybrid organizational forms, identities, and logics in order to contribute to sustainability.

Traditionally, business firms focus on achieving organizational level outcomes such as profitability through the mobilization of organizational level resources and capabilities. By contrast, sustainability embeds business activities in a systems context and is concerned with system-level outcomes (Bansal & Song, 2017; Valente, 2012). From the perspective of sustainability “business firms are expected to improve the general welfare of society” (Schwartz & Carroll, 2008, p. 168) and organizational sustainability initiatives are motivated by targeting and addressing sustainability challenges at the systemic level in order to generate a positive impact (Dyllick & Muff, 2016). Business sustainability thus mandates firms to translate system-level challenges into organizational level initiatives and strategies. Accordingly, sustainability in new ventures has been theorized as hybridity in terms of the challenge to adhere to competing logics (De Clercq & Voronov, 2011). A systems logic reflecting the complex dynamics of social and ecological systems starkly contrasts with the dominant linear logic of traditional for-profit business organizations (Valente, 2010).

Another source of hybridity in business sustainability is the multiplicity of sustainability goals that businesses are confronted with. This multiplicity is best illustrated by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are increasingly used as a reference for business contributions to sustainability (George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi, & Tihanyi, 2016). The SDGs comprise an agenda of 17 different goals that need to be achieved simultaneously for moving toward sustainability at the global level. However, while these goals all appear desirable in isolation, they are “inextricably connected and internally interdependent” (Bansal, 2002, p. 123). Their simultaneous pursuit entails the risk of unintended consequences as advances in one area may well have repercussions in others (Newton, 2002). From a business perspective, this multiplicity of sustainability concerns gives rise to tensions (Vildåsen, 2018) since they go counter business-as-usual practices and strategies, leading to a “clash between the dominant business model […] and a longer-term sustainability agenda” (Scheyvens, Banks, & Hughes, 2016, p. 378). Integrating and embedding sustainability goals into ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• INTRODUCTION
• SECTION A:  MULTIPLE THEORETICAL LENSES
• SECTION B:  Varied Empirical Contexts
• SECTION C:  Multilevel and Dynamic Approaches
• Index