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Abstract

The increasing complexity of real-world business environments, problem-solving, and governance has outgrown traditional organizational theories, which are based solely on negative externalities and the market-hierarchy duality. We add a social-network dimension to “market” and “hierarchy” and develop an extended con-ception of a hybrid organizational space. We fill this two-dimensional space, the “organizational triangle”, with a more specific hybrid organizational structure. We not only consider this structure a combination of the three allocation mechanisms but also integrate multiple and heterogeneous entities into that triangle, i.e., firms, local public-private networks, and state agencies (e.g., courts). This entails multiple and diverse interrelations, objectives, values, and behaviors. In joint conflict-solv-ing, entities will have to adapt to each other, and often to adopt principles of other entities, implementing the hybridity of the system within their own organization, decision-making, and learning of new emerging social institutions. This is investi-gated in case studies of Chinese non-governmental local “People’s Mediation Com-mittees”. These function as hubs that, with their conflict-settling arrangements, link the agents in new ways and through new informal institutions to be learned. They also use specific explicit and implicit contracts, complementing hierarchical, mar-ket, and network contracting. Such more comprehensive hybridity may help advance organizational theories in economics and management studies.

Notes

Externalities· Complexity· Socialnetwork· Hybrid organization· Organizational Triangle· Polycentricity· Implicit contracts· Chinese people’s mediation committees

Bildschirmfoto 2025-03-19 um 10.20_edite

Professor für Volkswirtschaftslehre

Fakultät für Volkswirtschaftslehre

Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaften

University of Bremen

Faculty of Business Studies and Economics / WiWi 2

 

Max-von-Laue-Sr. 1

28359 Bremen, Germany

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