Hybridizing the Triple Helix: A prerequisite for managing wicked issues

• Author: Anna Thomasson,Caroline Wigren Kristoferson
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/faam.12245
• Date: 01 May 2020
• Published date: 01 May 2020

Received: 15 January 2019 Revised: 26 January 2020 Accepted: 11 February2020

DOI: 10.1111/faam.12245

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Hybridizing the Triple Helix: A prerequisite

for managing wicked issues

Anna Thomasson1Caroline Wigren Kristoferson2

1Department of Business Administration, School

of Economics and Management, Lund University,

Lund, Sweden

2Sten K. Johnson Centre for Entrepreneurship,

School of Economics and Management, Lund

University, Lund, Sweden

Correspondence

AnnaThomasson, Department of Business

Administration,School of Economics and Man-

agement,Lund University, P.O.Box7080, SE- 220

07Lund, Sweden.

Email:anna.thomasson@fek.lu.se

Abstract

Striving to meet the challenges facing our society today, there is a

growth in the number of cross-sector collaboration. Expectations

on these organizations are high in terms of their ability to deliver

innovative solutions to wicked issues, but the task is challenging.

This study contributes to our understanding of Triple Helix constel-

lations and their ability to take on challenges related to complex

and wicked issues. Even if research on hybrid organization is quite

extensive, our understanding of how organizations hybridize is still

scarce. With a holistic perspective on hybridity,as a point of depar-

ture, the purpose in this study is to analyze hybridization in order to

investigate to what extent an organization recognize hybridity and

adapt strategy and processes in order to exploit hybridity and use it

as a source of creativity and innovation. We answer the purpose by

combining research on hybrid organization with research on strat-

egy and boundary spanning activities and by analyzing an organiza-

tion’s hybridizing process, using a case study approach. The study

contributes to existing research on organizational hybriditytheoret-

ically as well as empirically.

KEYWORDS

hybridize, organizational hybridity, strategy, Triple Helix, wicked

issue

1INTRODUCTION

Hybrid organizations are not new phenomena (Bozeman, 1987; Dahl & Lindblom, 1953). The attention given to

“hybridization” with respect to organizations, however,seems to have increased during the last decades and we have

seen a growing number of cross-sector collaborations and boundary spanning activities (Anttonen, Lammi, Mykkänen,

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c

2020 The Authors. Financial Accountability & Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Financial Acc & Man. 2020;36:207–222. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/faam 207

208 THOMASSON ANDKRISTOFERSON

& Repo, 2018; Ferlie,Fitzgerald, Dopson, & Bennett, 2011; Head & Alford, 2015; Jay, 2013). For public sector scholars,

the blurring of sectors is associated with the marketization process that followed in the wake of New Public Manage-

ment (Grossi, Reichard, Thomasson, & Vakkuri, 2017). This blurring of sectors does not only occur in the intersection

of public and private sectors, however.Hybrid organizations also emerge in the intersection of the private sector and

civil society, the private sector and academia, and the public sector and civil society (Seibel, 2015; Ferlieet al., 2011;

Anttonen et al., 2018). These hybrid constellations are often established as platforms for resource sharing and creativ-

ity,as well as to spur on technical and social innovations that can meet today’s complex and “wicked” problems (Head &

Alford,2015; Klijn & Koppenjan, 2012; Anttonen et al., 2018). “ Wickedissues” currently characterize late-modern soci-

ety (Bauman, 2000). Such problems are ambiguous and fluid, and their solution demands equally complex approaches

(Joosse & Teisman,2020), involving different actors (Klijn & Koppenjan 2012), which, in turn, results in the emergence

of a hybrid organizational arrangementthat, in itself,is ambiguous. An example of an organizational form involving dif-

ferent actors is the Triple Helix. A Triple Helix is according to Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff (1995) an organization that

involvesactors from the industry, the government, and academia.

Due to their position on the boundary between different sectors (as per the above), hybrid organizations have

attracted the attention of scholars from different fields, and thus different scholarly perspectiveshave been applied to

these organizations. There are researchers that have approached the subject of “hybridity” bydefining how organiza-

tions combine characteristics from different sectors (Billis, 2010; Dennis et al., 2015), whereas others havefocused on

governance and control mechanisms (Kurunmäki & Miller,2006; Seibel, 2015; Steccolini, 2019). Yet other have under-

stood “hybridity” as the result of competing “institutional logic” (Greenwood,Diaz Magán, Li Xiao, & Lorente Céspedes,

2010; Pache& Santos, 2013a) or conflicting identities within organizations (Fiol, Pratt, & O’Connor, 2009; Pratt & Fore-

man, 2000). In the present study,focus will be on “competing logics” found in different organizations, and our theoret-

ical point of departure will be “institutional theory.”However, due to the similarities between research on “competing

logics” and “organizational identities,” we will also makereference to certain research results that have been made on

the topic of “organizationalidentity.”

Scholars who study “hybridity”claim that that a combination of logics can transform hybridity into an advantage and

the source of something new (Battilana, Sengur, Pache, & Model, 2015; Fiol et al., 2009; Jay, 2013; Pratt & Foreman,

2000). The proper management of “hybridity” by combining competing logics requires that the liminal space between

sectors is exploited and used as a platform for creativity and innovation.It is in this liminal space that conflicting logics

interactwith each other, resulting in a new hybrid logic (Fiol et al., 2009; Battilana & Lee, 2014). However,a combination

of logics requires that changes in organizational process be made through an iterative process (Fiol et al., 2009; Jay,

2013). Battialana and Lee (2014) refer to this process as hybridizing.

The fact that the combination of resources and competences from different sectors can lead to innovation and new

creativesolutions is the reason why hybrid organizations are created in the first place (Jay, 2013). Notwithstanding this,

existing research on hybridityhas primarily focused on challenges that are related to hybridity (Battilana & Lee, 2014)

and less so on how organizations hybridize (i.e., how they adapt organizational processes so as to allow for competing

logics to meet and interact with each other and allow new logics/identities to emerge).

Consequently, even though previous research on hybridity is quite extensive, there is still little knowledge avail-

able regarding how organizations hybridize (Battilana & Lee, 2014). We intend to fill this gap. Using a combination of

existingknowledge on organizational hybridity, the purpose of the present study is to analyze hybridization in order to

investigate the extentto which organizations recognize hybridity and adapt their strategies and processes in order to

exploit hybridityand use it as a source of creativity and innovation.

This study furthers our understanding regarding how organizations hybridize by means of an in-depth case study

of hybridizing in a triple helix organization. More specifically,the study shows how organizations understand (or fail to

understand) “hybridity” and how hybridityin itself is a wicked issue that needs to managed and how that influences the

ability to address the wicked issue that stakeholdersexpect the organization to address.

This paper is structured in the following way: The next section presents the theoretical framework that we used.

This is followed by a presentation of the method, the case study itself,and the results of the case study. We conclude