Hybrid organizations and the logics of entrepreneurial ecosystems

Abstract

Growing evidence suggests entrepreneurial ecosystems are a potent engine for economic and community development. Prior research has identified an ecosystem’s culture as serving a critical role in its creation and functioning. However, it is not clear how the cultural forces in entrepreneurial ecosystems develop and are shaped by individuals, organizational actors, and ecosystem-level institutions. Drawing from institutional theory and theories of multiple logic organizations (i.e., hybrids), this paper combines entrepreneurship and management research to argue that entrepreneurial ecosystems are influenced by two dominant institutional logics: entrepreneurial-market and community. By combining both logics, hybrid support organizations, such as incubators, accelerators, and small business development centers, play a unique role in entrepreneurial ecosystems by exposing participants to the two guiding logics. Furthermore, it is argued that intra-ecosystem variation among hybrid support organizations in the dominance of entrepreneurial-market and community logics, will result in a diversity of entrepreneurship within an ecosystem. This theorizing contributes to the understanding of entrepreneurial ecosystems by shedding light on the role institutional logics and hybrid support organizations play in ecosystem formation, structuring, and function and by explaining the genesis of the cultural values that guide ecosystem participants.