Managing Institutional Logic Hybridization Process: A Strategy-Timing Contingency Approach

Abstract

Hybrid organization research is witnessing prosperity. However, we know little about hybrid organizations that are “made”, namely, those transited from original single-logic to dual/multiple-logic forms through logic hybridization. As an example, we focus on the “familization” transition of lone-founder firms, during which single market-logic organizations integrate family logic and evolve to market-family hybridity, and examine buffering approaches to manage organizational destabilizations in this transition. We find financial slack and founder reputation, representing for unfitness- and discontinuity-buffering strategies respectively, could loosen the positive relation between familization transition and TMT turnover rate (i.e., organizational destabilization). Meanwhile, as field-level density of market-family hybridity (i.e., family ownership) evolves dramatically during our observation window, the relative effectiveness of the two buffering strategies also varies. On industry level, following family ownership density grows, the moderation effect of financial slack becomes weaker while the moderation effect of founder reputation becomes stronger. Our findings suggest logic-hybridizing likely happens in transition phase between firm life-cycle stages, and propose to manage organizational destabilization by a strategy-timing (evolution) contingency view.