Hybridity

Hybridity refers to a condition under which two or more modes of governance are incorporated into a public organization. Modes of governance are typically defined as hierarchy, market, and network. Public organizations normally demonstrate hierarchical governance, through the bureaucratic order they bring to work inside the organization and to their external relationships with clients, users, and citizens. A hybrid public organization exhibits market or network modes of governance alongside the hierarchical. Examples include requiring its own staff to compete against firms and nonprofits for a service delivery contract, or working cooperatively with other organizations to deliver outcomes that could not be achieved alone.

This general definition of hybridity is modified by the theoretical approach in different literatures. It is essential to understand these variations so that confusion is avoided. Transaction cost economics views hybridity as an intermediate mode of governance between the polar opposites of market and hierarchy. It is characterized by features such as long-term contracting and reciprocity. The hybrid mode contains the incentives and autonomy found in markets and the administrative controls and coordination found in hierarchy, but at less intense levels. This theory analyzes the choice of governance mode as a function of the incidence of transaction costs and helps explain public-private and public-nonprofit contractual relationships.

The public administration literature in the United States locates hybridity in the context of the credible commitment problem. This is the question of how the property rights arising from a government decision can be protected, especially in a political environment where pressure groups seek to undermine program implementation. A solution is to create part-public, part-private agencies operating at arm's length to government. They are defined as hybrids because of their combination of public and private characteristics. They are bodies that deliver public policy, but do so through a corporate status that gives them access to private finance. And although they are creatures of government, they also lobby politicians and civil servants as if they were private companies.

Management theory views hybridity as a combination of organizational design archetypes. The ideal-typical designs are simple structure (coordination through direct supervision), adhocracy (coordination by all staff through mutual adjustment), machine and professional bureaucracies, and divisions or departments. There are tensions among each ideal type, and consequently, theoretical hybrids can be defined. For example, the tensions between simple structure and adhocracy produce an “entrepreneurial adhocracy” in which small self-organizing teams are coordinated by an overall manager. This approach to hybridity contributes to understanding the changing forms of public organizations.

Hybrids can be analyzed as a cultural phenomenon where public policy making and management involve actors whose traditions of governance differ. For example, business actors come from an environment where objectives and outcomes are more easily defined than in the public sector, and where executive rather than consultative decision making is the norm. Hybridity is the outcome of negotiating these different governance cultures. The style of decision making and management will contain elements from a number of different cultures. This perspective highlights the problems that cultural hybridity presents for the underlying ethos of public governance because it potentially dilutes the core values of transparency, neutral competence, and democratic accountability.

...