Hybridisation of diverging institutional logics through common-note practices – an analogy with music and the case of social enterprises

Abstract

Hybrid organisations exhibit high degree of innovativeness, but also instability due to the conflicting institutional logics underpinning their activities. We enrich the discussion on how to reconcile conflicting logics in hybrid organisations using the analogy with music theory. In particular, we get inspiration from a technique used to modulate conflicting harmonies by means of the notes they have in common (common-notes) to derive ideas on how to compose conflicting logics by means of the practices they have in common. We illustrate these ideas in the specific case of social enterprises, showing that practices able to 'unblock' a marginalised individual's value creation capabilities can be considered common-note practices allowing the social enterprise to fruitfully and sustainably combine commercial and social welfare logics.

The relevance of Innovation for Ethics, Responsibility and Sustainability

“…The paper entitled 'Hybridization of diverging institutional logics through common-note practices: an analogy with music and the case of social entrepreneurship' by Mongelli, Rullani, and Versari (2017) deals with the organisational logics, i.e. practices, beliefs and assumptions underlying an organisation's behaviour.…”

Visitor-Sensing: Involving the Crowd in Cultural Heritage Organizations

“…All this will translate into greater numbers of visitors, with positive impacts on both the economic sustainability of museums, in terms of increased revenues, and their social sustainability, in terms of a wider audience reached and increased literacy of citizens, which are two crucial aspect of the sustainability tripod to which organizations are increasingly paying attention [27,[79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87]. The above-mentioned issues are relevant issues for both cultural heritage organizations and policymakers [28,56], thereby benefiting simultaneously the two logics which characterize hybrid organizations [55,88]. Considering the SDGs contained in the United Nations Agenda 2030, the framework proposed in this study also contributes to the achievement of a more sustainable global development [2,89,90], towards the advancements of Goals 11.4 and 4 (i.e., safeguarding world cultural heritage and promoting lifelong learning opportunities to all, respectively).…”

(German) Universities as multiple hybrid organizations

“…According to Ciesielska, a hybrid organization is a Bplace where heterogeneous institutions, logics of actions, ideologies and identities meet ( Ciesielska 2010: 6). In a similar way, other authors emphasize the multiplicity of organizational forms deviating from traditional templates (Boccardelli et al 2018), the heterogeneity of institutional logics (Mongelli et al 2017;Pache and Santos 2013), or the plurality of system relations (Bode 2003). In their seminal paper on organizational identity, Albert and Whetten (1985;Whetten 2006) have already applied the term Bhybrid organization^to the university due to its twofold identity (as a church and as a company).…”