Relational perspective on hybrid organizing across the micro, meso, and macro level contexts of social entrepreneurship
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Date
28/04/2022Item status
Restricted AccessEmbargo end date
28/04/2023Author
Koehne, Florian
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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.