Hybridizing the institutional logics of performance improvement and budgetary stewardship in English and Welsh local government

Abstract

This article introduces and applies a three-stage process to show how advocates of the conflicting institutional logics of budgetary stewardship and performance improvement in English and Welsh local authorities created a hybrid logic. Drawing on interviews with officers in 25 councils, it demonstrates how cooperative working environments meant that hybridization proceeded largely ‘peacefully’, in contrast to previous studies of more competitive contexts that found it occurs on a ‘battlefield’. We argue that the nature of conflict within the hybridization process, along with the power dynamics between representatives of different logics, shapes the nature and sustainability of the resulting hybrid.