Fully revised and refined, this new edition of Institutional Theory and Organizational Change considers the developments in the fireld of isntitutional organization theory over the past decade. With each chapter beifn significantly updated, the book explains what the instituional organization approach means by bringing special attention to how the insitutional encironment is made up and how organizations are governed by it.Throughout the book. Staffan Furusten also brings attention to core concepts and arguments within institutional theory and resents them in a easily tangible model for understanding insitutional pressure on organizations. New analysis featured in the book includes organizing beyond managment and markets, organizational change through re-contextualization and institutional pressure through institutional elements. The examples presented in the book can be used as a navigation tool for additional learning about what the insitutional environment consists of and what organizationa can do to handle insitutional demands.The second edition of thei book is a lucid introduction to contemporary institutional organizational analysis and will be a key resource for undergradueate and postgraduate studies in critical management studies, organizational studies, as well as managers and policy makers.

The rapidly growing research on hybrid organizations in recent years suggests that these organizations may have particular abilities to facilitate institutional change. This article contributes to our understanding of change and, in particular, sustainable transformation in society by highlighting the importance of organizational forms. Looking more closely at the role of hybrid organizations in processes of path generation, we analyze the conditions under which hybrid organizations may enable path generation. A retrospective (1988–2017) exploratory case study of the Swedish hybrid organization The Natural Step confirms how hybrids can take part in- and may facilitate the early phases of path generation: assimilation and coalescence. The conclusion drawn is that hybrids have multivocal abilities that enable them to earn trust and authority to open up “neutral” spaces for orientation and connection between actors in separated sub-paths, and that this in turn may ease tensions and trigger dialogue and exchange, also between former opponents. Yet, as also seen in the case, this enabling position of the hybrid may be both fragile and temporary.

Hybrid organizations are topical in contemporary society, and literature in this area is growing. One neglected dimension is, however, empirically based theorizations of management and governance in hybrid organizations. Moreover, the literature tends to be based on observations of “new” forms of hybrid organizations, often referred to as social enterprises. We argue that if we want to learn about what managing hybrid organizations means, it is important to compare different types of hybrids and also to compare hybrids with as long history with those established relatively recently. Based on earlier literature, hybrid organizations are discussed as placed in contexts of institutional pluralism, at the cross-roads between institutional orders and institutional logics. Special focus is placed on exploration and comparison of what is defined here as constitutional hybrid organizations, thus hybrid organizations founded with the explicit purpose of fulfilling their mission by integrating either different institutional orders such as the market, the public sector and civil society or structural traits from the logics of different ideal-typical organizations such as the business corporation, the public agency and the association. We argue that multivocality is a concept that can explain why some hybrid organizations manage to remain hybrids over time while others face de-hybridization. A common analytical frame for the volume is developed, where six dimensions of hybridity are defined (institutional order, logics of organizational forms, ownership structures, purpose, main stakeholders and main sources of funding). The aim of this chapter is to introduce why it is timely to theorize on management and governance in hybrid organizations, to develop the theoretical frame for the book, and to introduce the explorative multidisciplinary approach behind the book and the selection of cases. The chapter ends with a brief discussion of the chapters to come.

This chapter focuses on governance challenges in mutually owned insurance companies. We analyze the variation in how hybrids organize themselves and discuss why mechanism for institutionalization is not always in place. A comparative approach was chosen to study how democracy is expressed and the ownership governance system is organized in two Swedish insurance companies with a long history, where Folksam was always a mutual and Skandia only recently became a mutual. Departing from Stinchcombe's imprinting theory, the findings suggest that institutional conditions at the time of their establishment as mutuals may have imprinted governance practices in these mutuals that persist beyond the founding phase.