The New Heretics: Hybrid Organizations and the Challenges They Present to Corporate Sustainability

Abstract

Corporate sustainability has gone "mainstream"; reaching into all areas of business management. Yet, despite this progress, large-scale social and ecological issues continue to worsen. In this paper, we examine how corporate sustainability has been operationalized as a concept that supports the dominant beliefs of strategic management rather than challenging them to shift business beyond the unsustainable status quo. Against this backdrop, we consider how hybrid organizations (organizations at the interface between for-profit and non-profit sectors that address social and ecological issues) are operating at odds with beliefs embedded in strategic management and corporate sustainability literatures. We offer six propositions that further define hybrid organizations based on challenges they present to the assumptions embedded in these literatures, and position them as new heretics of mainstream strategic management and corporate sustainability orthodoxy. We conclude with the implications of this heretical force for theory and practice.

Managing Sustainable Hybrid Organisations: A Case Study in the Agricultural Sector

“…The pursuit of social and environmental improvements through their practices, products and services, in parallel with good economic performance, is precisely what defines hybrid organisations [15,16]. Characterised by their sustainable and innovative business models, these organisations have generated a growing body of literature in recent years [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23].…”

“…Taking the hybrid organisation literature as our frame of reference, in this article we focus on the so-called sustainability-driven hybrid business model [15,16,23]. We chose this model because we agree with Stubbs [24] (p. 302) that "to date, it is the most comprehensive discussion of the characteristics of a sustainable hybrid business model in the literature".…”

Strategic Responses to Hybrid Social Ventures

“…58 One scenario is that hybrids will grow so large that they replace existing companies in a process of "creative destruction." Our research suggests, however, that these two types of companies are innovating in parallel, through a variety of nuanced interactions.…”

Can Ecolabels Influence Firms’ Sustainability Strategy and Stakeholder Behavior?

“…Such collaborations may encourage more widespread industry use of the label because of the legitimacy these ecolabels have within their professional networks, while meeting environmental NGOs' sustainability objectives. Future research might also explore if alternative organizational forms, including as hybrid organizations that combine for profit and nonprofit entities (Haigh & Hoffman, 2014), might be more effective at designing ecolabels with more robust institutional structures.…”