Integrated Organizational Identity: A Definition of Hybrid Organizations and a Research Agenda

In contemporary societies an increasing number of social needs have to be financed by market activities. In this regard, scholars started to discuss whether ‘Social Innovation’, ‘Social Entrepreneurship’, ‘CSR’, ‘Social Enterprise’, ‘Enterprising Nonprofits’, and ‘Social Business’ are able to provide solutions for financially sustainable social services. Just how these so-called Hybrid Organizations balance the tension between social and economic issues still requires conceptualization. This paper introduces the following definition based on the literature on organizational identity, civil society, and marketized nonprofits: Hybrids are characterized by an organizational identity that systematically integrates civil society and markets, exchange communal solidarity for financial and non-financial resources, calculate the market value of communal solidarity, and trade this solidarity for financial and nonfinancial resources. In other words they “Create Functional Solidarity”. Criteria to empirically observe Hybrid Organizations are also introduced and compared to similar concepts. The paper concludes with an outline of a research agenda.