Public organizations today have to cope with an increasingly complex environment that exerts a variety of institutional pressures (Greenwood et al. 2011, Newton, Ewing, and Collier 2014, Pache and Santos 2013). In response to... [ view full abstract ]
Public organizations today have to cope with an increasingly complex environment that exerts a variety of institutional pressures (Greenwood et al. 2011, Newton, Ewing, and Collier 2014, Pache and Santos 2013). In response to these pressures, public organizations tend to mix different management paradigms, such as Traditional Public Management, New Public Management (NPM) and post-NPM (De Waele 2015). As a result, these organizations have become kinds of hybrids where often competing institutional logics are being simultaneously embedded. Moreover, previous studies revealed that a great part of public organizations are subject to hybridization (Kickert 2001, De Waele 2016). Yet, the performance-effects of such ‘hybrid’ organizations have not been researched in detail so far.
Performance effects are however hard to predict. On the one hand public managers might actively use hybridization in order to ensure and enhance legitimacy so that they maintain public support and access to scarce funds (Gulbrandsen 2011). On the other hybridization might lead to a complex organizational structure where different institutional logics might result in potential agency problems. Hybridization might thus positively affect performance when it enables the organization to ensure legitimacy so that the continued existence of the organization is ensured. However, performance might become at stake because of potentially induced agency problems.
This paper tries to study the performance-effects of hybrid public organizations and links in this respect the way organizations are being managed with the effects on organizational performance.
The scope of this empirical study is the health and social housing sector in Flanders (Belgium) as earlier empirical research indicated that this sector is largely subject to hybridization (De Waele 2016). In this paper we report the results of the first phase of empirical research. Data are being triangulated through a combination of document analysis, annual reports, policy reports, organigrams, websites and inspection reports of the Flemish Care Inspection. Data will be analyzed quantitatively.
De Waele, Lode; Berghman, Liselore; Matthyssens, Paul. 2015. "Defining and operationalizing hybridity within public organizations." In Studies in Public and Non-Profit Governance: Contingency, behavioural and evolutionary perspectives on public and non-profit governance, edited by Luca; Hinna Gnan, Alessandro; Monteduro, Fabio, 113-155. Bingley: Emerald.
De Waele, Lode; Berghman, Liselore; Matthyssens, Paul. 2016. "INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE, AUTONOMY AND LEGITIMIZATION: Drivers of hybridization in the public sector and their interrelations." IRSPM, Hong Kong, 13-15 April 2016.
Greenwood, R., M. Raynard, F. Kodeih, E. R. Micelotta, and M. Lounsbury. 2011. "Institutional Complexity and Organizational Responses." Academy of Management Annals 5:317-371. doi: 10.1080/19416520.2011.590299.
Gulbrandsen, M. 2011. "Research institutes as hybrid organizations: central challenges to their legitimacy." Policy Sciences 44 (3):215-230. doi: 10.1007/s11077-011-9128-4.
Kickert, J.M. Walter. 2001. "Public management of hybrid organizations: governance of quasi-autonomous executive agencies." International Public Management Journal 4:135-150.
Newton, J. D., M. T. Ewing, and P. M. Collier. 2014. "Resolving contradictions in institutional demands through loose coupling." Industrial Marketing Management 43 (5):747-753. doi: 10.1016/j.indmarman.2014.04.004.
Pache, A. C., and F. Santos. 2013. "Inside the Hybrid Organization: Selective Coupling as a Response to Competing Institutional Logics." Academy of Management Journal 56 (4):972-1001. doi: 10.5465/amj.2011.0405.
H1 - Management and Organizational Performance (PMRA-Sponsored panel)
