IBID – International Research Network on Institutional Hybridity
International Research Network on Institutional Hybridity (IBID) is an inter-disciplinary and open research network focused on academic research on institutional hybridity, hybrid governance, hybrid policies and hybrid organizing. As an abbreviation for the Latin word ibīdem, meaning “in the same place”, ibid has two implications. First, hybridity is about institutional collaboration of actors with different, often competing and contrasting logics and interests. However, they need to find a way to be “in the same place” for a common purpose and the common good. Furthermore, the purpose of IBID is to advance research on institutional hybridity by organising research activities, disseminating information on events and current research, and helping scholars from different institutions to connect with each other. IBID aims to help research and researchers interested in institutional hybridity to be “in the same place”. IBID network:
- Gathers information on the latest research and events related to hybridity
- Organises events for researchers interested in hybridity
- Supports education on related topics
Researching institutional hybridity
Complex policy problems rarely follow the definitions of sectoral or organisational mandates in which individual concerns are linked to specific policy problems and where the respective accountabilities are easily demonstrated through the performance of individual policies. Consider the processes of combating climate change, surviving pandemics, alleviating social exclusion, or developing sustainable and democratic cities, which are highly collaborative exercises between public policies and agencies, private businesses, economic institutions, and civic activities. Tackling such complex collaborative interplay between the institutional domains of public, private, and civic actors and activities is what we have started to call hybridity.
There is a paradox in addressing, conceptualizing and “doing” hybridity. While societies increasingly acknowledge that governing hybridity poses a problem in how important societal impacts and forms of value are created, they face fundamental dilemmas with understanding why, through what mechanisms, and with what impacts this takes place. We are puzzled with a fairly simple question: why and how do the distinct forms of ownership, institutional logics, and competing value-creation mechanisms sometimes contradict and collide, while at other times, via collaboration between public, private, and civil society actions, they collectively promote important societal aims?
It is almost as the old oracle put it, “All things have two handles: beware of the wrong one.” (Emerson, 1837/2022).
As governments have evolved into more hybrid constellations of actors, public governance has increasingly resorted to collaboration between governments and business as well as public–private–civil society cooperation. In many cases, the expanding space between government and society has not liberated outsourced activities from government regulation or dependence on public financing. In fact, the result is often a hybrid arrangement, which combines public interests, for-profit motives and local self-determination.
Sometimes the emptying of governments has given rise to development of practices which have reversed the traditional principle – agent roles by giving new powers to non-governmental operators to oversee the dealings of their public masters.
From a bird’s-eye view, hybrid arrangements may appear complicated and messy. It is easy to see them as monstrous, as constellations of hollow politics in which important strategic choices have not been made democratically, or as systems of lousy business practices in which red tape prevents the pursuit of profit maximization. While we may be aware of the dilemmas of contrasting accountabilities, and control of hybrids, we often tend to ignore the effects of our own thought processes in naming and categorizing hybrid activities.
Indeed, it is important to open the discussion to critical voices to study the “dark side” of hybridity. These may include distinct forms of misuse and manipulation of powers, not for common good, but for local gains.
Hybrid action involves multiplicity of goals, audiences, and performances. For IBID, hybrids are not a panacea for survival, nor are they a peril to our existence. Instead, they constitute fascinating subject of academic inquiry and opportunity for public management practice.