Hybridity Enacted in a Large English Housing Association: A Tale of Strategy, Culture and Community Investment

Abstract

This paper seeks to advance the understanding of hybridity in the social housing sector by drawing on a multi-layered case study of a single, large housing association X (HAX) to illustrate how the competing logics that underpin that hybridity are enacted at a small, locally based subsidiary (Small Housing Association). The inherent paradoxes and complexity that characterise the third sector of housing in the UK have been explored in a study of the changing strategic management and organisational culture for community investment activities over a 2-year period at HAX. The study links the concepts of institutional logics [Friedland & Alford (1991) The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press); Thornton & Ocasio (1999) American Journal of Sociology, 105(3), pp. 801–843] in a social housing context [Mullins (2006) Public Policy and Administration, 21(3), pp.6–21] with organisational cultures [Gregory (1983) Administrative Science Quarterly, 28, pp. 359–376; Hofstede, 1993] to locate the strategic focus of the organisation in a logics–culture matrix. A link between a consumerist or customer logic and a prevailing corporate culture is identified, together with a more historic connection between a community logic and a weakening regional, locally responsive culture.