Organizational strategy is about locating and exploiting new product and market opportunities (Miles et al., 1978). The organizational environment of hybrid organizations is hybrid too. This paper argues that organizational strategy of hybrid organizations is about responding to opportunities and threats in the public, private and non-profit environment. Each of these environments will have its own unique set of characteristics. Therefore, we might argue that the hybrid character of hybrid organizations triple their strategic challenges and repertoires: each of the environments need to be approached with a specific strategic response which in its turn may also affects strategies in the other domains.
Building on a resource dependency approach (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978), this papers reports about the design and results of a survey among Dutch sheltered work companies. Sheltered work companies are responsible for offering a sheltered environment to disabled workers. In doing so, they combine the characteristics of non-profit care work, state bureaucracy and private companies. In their operations, sheltered work companies are confronted with three environmental domains: (1) the market on which they sell goods and services, often in competition with regular companies and temp agencies, (2) the government, from which they receive a subsidy for each disabled that is placed a the company; and (3) the community, by providing care and meaning to the life of disabled people (Van der Torre, 2016). Interesting in the work of sheltered work companies, is that their hybrid character leads to paradoxical demands from disabled people. For instance, in their role as private companies disabled workers need to be effective and efficient workers, in the ‘caring’ non-profit role, the well-being of the workers is the most important goal.
The survey focuses on the identity of the organizations, the assessment of the organizational environment and the organizational strategies in response to challenges and opportunities in each of the three organizational domains. The survey also zooms in on the relations between the three domains, and the ways in which the companies considers their mixed environment as an opportunity of a constrained in their organizational strategies. The survey has been sent to all 92 directors of SW-companies and had a response rate of 73%. This survey was part of a Dutch Ph.D. project, but has not yet been reported in English.
References
Miles R.E., Snow, C.C., Meyer, A.D., Coleman, H.J. Jr (1978). Organizational strategy, structure and process. The Academy of Management Review, 3(3): 546-562.
Pfeffer, J. and G. R. Salancik (1978). The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence Perspective. New York, NY: Harper and Row.
Van der Torre, E.J. (2016). Sociale werkvoorziening tussen overheid, markt en samenleving, Delft: Eburon.
