Essay: Multiple organizational hybrid identities (methodology)

While research on multiple individual identities has been thoroughly conducted in the psychological and sociological spheres, inquiry into multiple organizational “hybrid” identities has occurred relatively less often in organizational literature. The existence of multiple organizational identities is indeed recognized and its management is seen as a vital organizational function, however actual investigation into how the upper echelons of management maintain or nurture multiple identities at once is relatively less conducted (Pratt and Foreman (2000)). The purpose of this systematic review is to conduct such an investigation and uncover ways in which complex organizations manage their multiple identities into a hybrid identity.
Fundamentally, the notion of hybridity refers to the amalgamation of different parts, to make up something whole that is entirely unique. Hybrid organizations experience this through their combination of multiple organizational forms that de- part from the socially-practiced standards for organizing. Battilana and Lee (2014) define this hybrid organizing as “the activities, structures, processes and meanings by which organizations make sense of and combine multiple organizational forms”. They further identify three streams to delineate how organizations experience hybridity:
1. Hybridity as the combination of multiple institutional logics
2. Hybridity as the combination of multiple organizational forms
3. Hybridity as the combination of multiple organizational identities
Predominantly, investigations into hybridity regarding organizational form, institutional logic and organizational identity, have come to corresponding conclusions, despite their distinctive analysis. Although these various streams offer differing lenses through which one can view how organizations experience hybridity, there is no denying their interrelationship (Battilana and Lee, 2014, p.402). Organizational logics exist as the clusters of cultural materials and features, taken-for-granted beliefs and practices, which together comprise and construct organizational forms. Once these forms are adopted and institutionalized, they in turn provide the “cultural materials that organizational members assemble” to formulate “essential identity elements” (Glynn, 2008, p.426).
While the co-occurrence of these three constructs is without question, the third of these streams, organizational identity, is the focal point of this thesis. Albert and Whetten (1985) conceptualize organizational identity as being central, distinctive and enduring. In other words, the makeup of organizational identity are those attributes that members feel are fundamental to (central), uniquely descriptive of (distinctive) and that persist within the organization over time (enduring) (Pratt and Foreman, 2000, p.20). The configuration of these identities, determine the manageability of a hybrid identity, not only in its existence, but in its propensity to thrive. A plethora of variables, such as the quantity of identities being combined or the synergy of those identities have enormous impact (Pratt and Foreman (2000)). Identities should be further categorized as either core or peripheral. According to Albert and Whetten (1985), core, or holographic, multiple identities are shared across the entire organization by all of its members; while peripheral, or ideographic, multiple identities are carried by subgroups within the organization but are not shared organization-wide. Such a cocktail of identities is extremely complex and has the potential to insight conflict, however, managed effectively, multiple identities have far reaching impact across every aspect of an organization. The hybrid organization that is able to harness this powerful effect, can engage in successful commerce.
There are copious organizational settings that encompass multiple identities which could be drawn upon, such as hospitals or universities, however this thesis selects the social enterprise as the prime perspective through which to investigate hybrid organizational identity. Social enterprises embed conflicting social welfare and commercial logics, offering an extreme case of hybridization and are thus an ideal type of hybrid organization to analyze (Battilana and Lee (2014); Battilana and Dorado (2010)). The co-occurring success of its social mission and advancement of its business venture, are the two factors on which social enterprises’ identification as a hybrid is upheld. Alter (2008) determines that social enterprise is driven by two forces: the desire to incite social change, and the necessity of financial sus- tainability through a diversified, self-sustaining funding stream. With both forces assigning equal importance to its objectives, social enterprises require the collabo- ration of multiple organizational identities into its own functioning hybrid identity. This, however, is no easy feat, as such an ordeal is full of complexities, problems and tensions, which will be briefly touched on in this thesis.
1.2 Research and Review Protocol
Conducting a qualitative, systematic review will contribute to the current lit- erature regarding hybrid organizational identities, by adding value beyond that of a traditional literature review through the utilization of existing investigations to make practical inferences and propositions. The systematic review offers efficiency in hypothesis testing, in summarizing existing studies and in assessing the consis- tency among previous studies (Denyer and Tranfield, 2009, p.674). Additionally, systematic reviews might be expected to lend solid, reliable evidence that is robust and has potential for application across various contexts, all with the potential to influence policy, practice and future research (Denyer and Tranfield, 2009, p.672). This thesis employs the writings of Denyer and Tranfield (2009) to serve as a guiding hand in the development of this systematic review.
I initiated a two-stage approach to gathering appropriate studies from the literature, as inspired by (Doherty et al. (2014)). In the first, I employ the traditional methodology for collection, by conducting a search-engine inquiry. The initiation of the review process began with the search of the following specific keywords forged from the review question: *organizational identity* *social enterprise* *hybridity* *identity management*. Upon being presented with 18,600 hits on Google Scholar and 5,890 hits on Web of Science, I quickly realized such a gargantuan result required further curtailing. A refined search of social enterprise* AND multiple organizational identities* OR hybrid organization* organizational identity* resulted in 102 hits on Web of Science and 18,300 hits on Google Scholar. When Web of Science searches were classified by articles from journals ranked at least B or higher, the number of available sources decreased to 44. This is a good base for the start of the research.
Filtering out appropriate studies, as displayed in my selection criteria (see Table (1)), allowed me to further aggregate my search and selection. I excluded any studies that were conducted before 1985, because this was the year that Albert and Whetten (1985) first published their work on organizational identity, the cornerstone of our research. Even a preliminary look in the literature, upon selecting this topic, showed Albert and Whettens 1985 publication to be of massive importance and an overwhelming commonality among relevant scholars. These relevant scholars were also screened through my criteria, as those works published in anything less than a B- rated source was considered insufficient or unreliable. Emphasis was placed on those A+ to A rated journals, with B journals approved in supplement. In addition to A-B rated journal sources however, I also accepted both empirical and conceptual works from peer-reviewed, international working papers and books. Potential research must have also had any of the keywords mentioned in either their title and/or abstract. Importantly, failure to mention identity led to automatic expulsion.
Research on identity exists in many fields of study, thus a measurable amount of research stemmed from the fields of sociology or psychology. These studies were excluded and only those analyzing identity in through the perspective of organizational studies were admitted. As previously established, there are three major streams of research to study hybridity: institutional logics, organizational forms, and organizational identities. In the organizational literature, it is not uncommon for these three streams to overlap, as they are related, however, those studies that had a focus purely on institutional logics and/or organizational forms without the inclusion of organizational identity were certainly excluded.
Due to my interest in complex organizations, I felt it was important to refine my scope and focus on a certain type of complex organization. I therefore chose the “social enterprise”, as this type of organization could best serve as an appropriate illustration of a hybrid identity entity. There exist a multitude of hybrid organization types, so I often encountered studies in the literature, on the hybrid identities of organizations such as hospitals or universities. Therefore, I delineated my requirements to thus only include those studies of hybrid organizations with social enterprise as the focus.
Applying my inclusion/exclusion criteria to the Web of Science and Google Scholar hits, I settled with 45 total studies. I found that as I examined more and more hits, the less the potential studies fit my review requirements and the further outside my scope they seemed. Once my review process of the 45 initial total studies was underway, I felt the need to implement the second phase of my collection, employing a snowballing search technique to source new material from those 45 selected studies. Further, four of the initial 45 studies were found to be inapplicable, therefore I added 12 studies using the snowball method. Ultimately, I had 53 sources for review.
There following six main topics emerged throughout the evaluation of the literature sources, and subsequently served as an outline for the review: identity (n = 12), organizational identity (n = 19), multiple organizational identities (n = 11), hybrid identity organizations (n = 20), social enterprises (n= 15) and member identification (n = 12). Figure 5 (found in the Appendix) visually illustrates the different sources (listed by first author’s last name / publication year / first word of study title) and their corresponding themes, with obviously many sources classified as more than one, thus there are some overlaps. The spread of sources amongst the topics are appropriate for the purpose of this thesis.
Additionally, when sorting my sources by year (see Figure 3 in the Appendix) it appears that in recent years the amount of research regarding organizational hybridity and identity has increased since the end of the 1990s. The gap between 1985 and the 1998 quite interesting, but the higher interest in this subject matter may be attributed to modern-day business and the steady growth in concern for social responsibility that has occurred among consumers during the past two decade. Upon arranging my research sources by journal grade, (see Figure 4 in the Appendix) I could come to no overwhelming conclusion apart from noting the high volume of B-rating articles in my collection. Perhaps this highlights the need for increased research on the part of renowned academics such as Shelley Brickson, Dennis Gioia or Peter Foreman.