Abstract
Research on hybrid organizations and institutional complexity commonly depicts the presence of multiple logics within organizations as an exceptional situation. In this article, we argue that all organizations routinely adhere to multiple institutional logics. Institutional complexity only arises episodically, when organizations embrace a newly salient logic. We propose two concepts to develop this insight. First, we suggest the notion of organizational settlement to refer to the way in which organizations durably incorporate multiple logics. Second, we define organizational hybridization as a change process whereby organizations abandon their existing organizational settlement and transition to a new one, incorporating a newly salient logic. Overall, we propose a shift in attention from the exceptionality of hybrid configurations of multiple logics toward exploring the dynamics of transitions from one state of complexity to another.
Highlights
The leaders of many research universities have recently decided to exploit the potential value of academic discoveries, encouraging their scientists to become more entrepreneurial by commercializing intellectual property (Clark, 1998)
We propose the notion of organizational settlement to conceptualize truces that organizations form to accommodate multiple logics
We argue that when organizations are exposed to newly salient institutional logics—by choice, coercion, or incremental adaptation—they must reach a new organizational settlement
Summary
The leaders of many research universities have recently decided to exploit the potential value of academic discoveries, encouraging their scientists to become more entrepreneurial by commercializing intellectual property (Clark, 1998). Universities have formed technology transfer offices, established relationships with venture capitalists, and initiated entrepreneurial training programs (Colyvas & Powell, 2006; Mowery, Nelson, Sampat, & Ziedonis, 2001; Owen-Smith, 2003). In many cases, these interventions went hand-in-hand with leaders’ attempts to transform universities’ values, goals, and identities (Clark, 1998; Washburn, 2005). Even before embracing entrepreneurship, universities had to balance numerous incompatible influences, such as demands for relevant teaching (informed by state and market logics) and academically ambitious research (informed by the public science logic; see Dunn & Jones, 2010)
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