Relational perspective on hybrid organizing across the micro, meso, and macro level contexts of social entrepreneurship

Abstract

This thesis advances the theoretical and empirical understanding of hybrid organizing in the field of social entrepreneurship across micro, meso, and macro-level contexts. On the micro-level, it concentrates on the individual social entrepreneur as a hybrid social actor. On the meso-level, it focuses on social enterprises as hybrid organizations. On the macro-level, it is concerned with social entrepreneurship as a hybridizing mechanism across different institutional contexts. Three research papers are presented in this thesis, two qualitative papers and one conceptual paper. While each paper contributes to existing research on hybrid organizing for one particular level, the overall thesis provides critical implications for a relational, cross-level understanding of hybrid organizing and the Bourdieusian theory it applies. Paper 1 addresses the micro-level of hybrid organizing and theorizes on the potentials and perils of prosocial power in the context of transnational social entrepreneurs who leverage a multi-spatial embeddedness for their operations in vulnerable places. The paper reveals how prosocial power is embodied by transnational social entrepreneurs, as well as why and how the prosocial intentions and behaviors of these hybrid entrepreneurs can result in positive and negative prosocial impacts on the disadvantaged others they seek to support. Paper 2 addresses the meso-level of hybrid organizing from an institutional logics perspective and theorizes on the re-enchantment of collegiality as a previously marginalized polycratic governance concept. It discusses the potential of collegiality for the intra-organizational governance of hybrid enterprises as post-bureaucratic organizations for which alternative governance approaches with a non-bureaucratic logic remain largely absent or underdeveloped. Paper 3 applies institutional theory and addresses the macro-level of hybrid organizing by introducing an institutional nexus perspective of social entrepreneurship that links the existing institutional void and institutional support perspectives. It conceptualizes the critical influence of different migration directions and human capital endowments that exist among transnational social entrepreneurs. The paper presents a contextualized framework that expands the limited theoretical development in contemporary transnational entrepreneurship research for a better understanding of context-spanning hybridity.