The Investigation Toolbox : Hybridity
Nina Fowler, Uppsala University
As part of a larger study into the development of renewable energy technologies, of which the commercialisation processes surrounding this will be a main part of my PhD thesis, this paper on the hybridity of organisations is an initial exploration of my understanding of the concept. I am keen to see how an understanding of hybridity could aid in the development of my study into commercialisation of renewable energy technologies developed at the outset within the academic environment of an entrepreneurial university (Etzkowitz, 1997).
The Wave Energy Project has been active at the Division for Electricity at the University of Uppsala since 2004 with the first Wave Energy Converter (WEC) installed off the coast at Lysekil in 2006 (Danielsson, 2006). The research project comprises the development of a commercially viable WEC and as such is active at the interface between science and society (Guston, 2001), university research and the commercial product development process. Recently the researchers based at the university were invited to a weekend of meetings to discuss the on-‐going direction and management of the project, the narrative of which will structure my developing thoughts on the hybridity concept.
For me the main themes of hybridity concern the fuzziness of organisational boundaries albeit from an alternative viewpoint; rather than attempting to draw lines between organisations and describe where each ends and the next begins, an unnatural state according to Callon (1997), hybridity celebrates the lack of a line and attempts to draw clarity from the grey zone between organisational centres. It questions the way these mixtures function, or fail to function, why this is the case and essentially what they are if they are neither one nor the other, an idea drawn heavily upon by Pieterse (2001). In addition, hybridity relies somewhat on the successful resolution of opposing norms and orientations (Etzkowitz, 2003) to achieve the legitimacy required for survival (Gulbrandsen, 2011) in the hybrid form.
The specification of varieties is perhaps useful in clarifying more vague thoughts surrounding the concept of hybridity; Menard (2004) and Williamson (1991) have identified the structure and characteristics of boundary crossing firms as a mixture of, for example, market firms and governmental organisations. The organisational structure may be termed as a hybrid structure, taking functional elements of both a research institution and a profit-‐making organisation and combining them to achieve something quite different to either. As Gulbrandsen (2011) notes, an organisation may choose to split its activities into two organisations as a response to legitimacy challenges, suggesting another view of organisational hybridity. The second is intellectual hybridity, concerning the knowledge issues surrounding a cross-‐boundary organisation. The boundaries here are not only between the physicality of two organisations, but with the knowledge they produce and the public or private organisational role they play. In addition, softer issues such as ideologies and values could be included here (Gulbrandsen, 2011). The last is product hybridity, with an organisation producing different outputs for different customers, here differentiating between physical WECs and the patents and publications that are issued alongside them.
Oceanic Institute AB, a private company outside of the university, was established as a patent holding company in 2001, linked closely with the work undertaken at the Division for Electricity. A daughter unit, Oceanic Institute Industry AB, is engaged in industrial research and development as well as production, marketing and environmental analysis. Such industry-‐academia linkages are not uncommon;
particularly where the governmental bill concerning the teachers’ exception applies (Chiesa, 2001). The process of taking university-‐generated knowledge into industry is different in Sweden in that the researcher owns any patent rights rather than the university. This has been well documented and discussed in other works, so will not be the focus here. The relevance in the teachers’ exception lies in the unconventional situation of a university lecturer and researcher being able to establish and own a profit-‐
making organisation whilst maintaining their commitment to their academic duties, which forms the motivation for change in the case presented here.
As well as sharing intellectual property, the Division for Electricity and Oceanic Institute commonly share resources too, with researchers at the university being employed as project workers at Oceanic Institute Industry AB, sharing across the borders a selection of knowledge, rules and resources. Other examples of boundary crossing activities include manufacturing facilities at Oceanic Institute being used to produce WECs for academic research and research into manufacturing being performed at the university.
Finances can flow only from Oceanic Institute to the university. In one recent case, funding was offered to the university, not in financial form but as payment to Oceanic Institute for WECs to be produced and delivered to the university test site, based at Lysekil on the West coast of Sweden, i.e. the WECs were donated instead of finance.
This closely linked couple could be viewed in a number of ways, varying from collaboration with a spin-‐off to a single hybrid organisation. Ménard (2004) for example summarises the huge variety of relationships which can be labelled as hybrid, with networks of firms, franchising, collective trademarks, partnership, cooperatives and alliances all included under the hybrid terminology. With so many definitions and so much written surrounding the idea of hybrid organisations it seems that the best approach with this case is to describe the relationship with a background understanding of hybridity and to draw conclusions on the individual case.
The first question concerns understanding the nature, direction and type of organisational boundaries in hybrid organisations. In this case the autonomy of the two organisations is maintained, allowing them to pursue their own distinct objectives.
Unfortunately these objectives, turning a profit and engaging in good academic research, are sometimes at odds with one another, creating a conflict in the relationship.
Additionally, it risks the further conflict of role identity in the individual researcher.
Williamson (1991) refers to adaptation in organisation economy based on changes in price of commodities. It could not be a large leap to suggest that adaptations are made based on the value – or perceived value – of a commodity such as knowledge or an employee. One might even argue that the resultant value is of the greatest importance once risk has been accounted for, for example taking on an employee with a large amount of tacit knowledge could be a good adaptation, but if s/he is under an increased workload at the university their employment might carry with it increased risk of costly problems. As such, it would then be a less valuable asset to have. Accordingly, students and academic staff are allowed to judge for themselves whether they would be able to
take on the additional industrial employment at Oceanic Institute AB. This flexibility in the commodity value could begin to explain why the borders between the two organisations are fuzzy in nature.
Further, Williamson (1991) encourages the discussion of timely endings to hybrid organisations, suggesting that a joint venture may end unsuccessfully when the partners are no longer able to work together, or successfully when they have both learned enough to pursue their interests alone. There is also the possibility that the nature of the hybridity may change over the course of time, perhaps even destroying any existing stability, particularly if a catalyst is present. This catalyst may come in many forms, from the introduction of a new technology or individual to the deliberate restructuring of an organisation and the roles its individuals play. The question then arises concerning the nature of the phenomenon by which hybridity arises or is changed.
On a nondescript day in Southampton the project leader, a man in his fifties with a celebrated career in industry prior to his joining the world of academia, provides an explanation of the financial running of the WEC project. This is the first time many of the twenty-‐two in the room have seen this information and most certainly none have seen it in its entirety. His audience is the Wave Power group at Uppsala University, a team of engineering researchers with a range of specialities.
He summarises the successes and failures of funding applications, naming individuals in the room but avoiding selecting any one for derision. The feeling is of shared responsibility amongst those who have applied for research funding, successfully or otherwise. The suggestion is made that each person is responsible and should try harder and so the questions begin. Some ask how they can find the funding available. Others question the tricks they should learn to increase their rate of success. Further, one researcher questions how they might approach financers when the relationship the project leader has with “old friends” is credited for finding and delivering much needed financial support.
To the leader of this group, the provision of financial support is a contractual obligation for the recipient to provide a product; in the university sense this product is research.
The nature of that product, and therefore the work undertaken by the research team, is dependent on the funding applications that are successful. Naturally, commercially viable product knowledge is desirable for the funding agencies applied to and pure scientific research less so. As a result the research group find themselves torn between the commitment to produce published works and the scientific research favoured by the university and the contractual agreements to provide applied knowledge that can be utilised in industry. To ignore one or the other would have consequences and so the research performed must carefully balance both of these.
One of the advantages of the project appears to be the breadth of the study focus, unlike those presented at conferences such as EWTEC, which could be attributed to the competencies present through the existence of hybrid features of the organisation. By considering not only the element of the engineering solution and the scientific analyses of the biological effects and consequences of installation and use of the WEC, but also the economic, production and maintenance of the device, the group produces well-‐rounded, comprehensive information not only for critics of the technology but also commercial
interest groups. This puts it ahead of the remainder of the scientific community who do not engage in these activities and therefore gives it a commercially relevant competitive advantage. For others this is a contradiction of the tenets of university research and should be left to firms external to the university. Clearly, by aiming to be a producer of both science and commercially focused work the department is identifiable as an organisation with two different, if not completely distinct, forms of product -‐ a hybrid organisation. This is without the usual aim of universities, to provide education. There has been considerable effort made to describe the hybridity of the university’s role as a researcher-‐educator, and so I will focus instead on the research section of the Wave Power project at the university.
As the meeting progresses, the project leader asks for examples of issues that the project face. Suggestions are given, including those of communication, responsibility, authorship and the Master Plan. The team is selectively separated according to their speciality into sub-‐groups to discuss these issues, and the sub-‐groups spread out around the venue to talk. Later it becomes evident that these sub-‐groups have not been selected in this manner without a reason; the project leader announces that due to his being appointed to a higher administrative position within the university he is unable to continue in his operational duties in the project. Consequently the sub-‐groups (WECs, grid connection, IET offshore test, Lysekil management, WESA) become permanent and their leaders assigned permanent authority.
These very recent changes in organisation structure within the department suggest a third type of hybrid characteristics, with the team divided into sub-‐teams and co-‐
ordinated by an overall project manager, not the original project leader active previously, in some areas resembles that of a hybrid industry-‐based organisation as illustrated by Gellerman (1990) with decentralised decision making capabilities and centralised administration, i.e. not a typical university research group. This is further described by Lentz (1996) in her understanding of customer needs, or in this case contractual obligations imposed by financers, directing the work of the smaller sub-‐
groups, whilst all answer to the centralised administration functions.
Over the course of the seminar weekend and the following days at an international conference on wave energy technology the organisation had begun a change from a research team lacking a little in motivation and direction to an organisation with recognisable hybridity and strategic direction, albeit unsure as to how to handle their duel role, nature and organisational type.
The sharing and transfer of resources and knowledge between the two organisations then highlighted the notion that the boundaries between the two are permeable. Is it probable that the exchanges taking place are doing so at a constant rate and of a constant nature, or is this perhaps variable? Along with this could it be said that the exchanges were equal and proportional, or do they have directional value? Therefore, could the boundaries between the two organisations be both variable and directional?
The specific type of hybridity in which one might discover particular characteristics and peculiarities are a useful framework through which to view an organisation, particularly one undergoing change or subject to conflict. The theme of hybridity though appears to discard much of the qualitative understanding of an organisation, for example whilst the
case described is clearly hybrid in nature, it also has boundaries identifiable by factors such as finance and is even defined by the fact that the meetings observed included only the twenty two university researchers, excluding the Oceanic Institute and its employees not engaged in university research.
In following this case a variety of different themes have emerged that can be thought of exemplifying the concept of hybridity. Within these there are also understandings and beliefs held by the individuals involved regarding the opportunities and problems such hybrid characteristics might bring to an organisation so crucial to their own personal career development. One such type of hybridity, that of science and commercial knowledge production, is particularly controversial, offering both the opportunities that come with mixing core competencies (Pieterse, 2001) and the risks that present themselves with differing research types (Lam, 2010).
Hybridity as a concept therefore appears to be best applied as one of a series of tools for examining an organisation or collections of events within an organisation, with the specific type used to further develop understanding. In this case there are to me three main types of hybridity that may work in conjunction or be treated as separate issues:
intellectual, product and organisational structure hybridity.
Having formed an idea of the types of hybridity on which to concentrate my research efforts in the near future I can begin the process of examining exactly what each might mean for the on-‐going development and future not only of the Wave Power group but for the technology artefacts themselves. This then introduces the potential for use of other tools in the investigators toolkit; it might be interesting for example to deviate a little from the management theory understandings and begin to explore ideas surrounding honour and culture with regard to hybridity, as these are already somewhat developed in sociology of culture studies (Pieterse, 2001). To further explain my thoughts here one might look at how Pieterse (2001) examines hybridity as a factor in individuals with mixed heritage, and as such combined cultures, honour codes, etc., in resolving their identity and various roles they might play. The same might be said of hybrid organisations, combining core competencies, values and cultures.
Further, the theme of legitimacy emerges repeatedly in successfully maintaining the hybrid organisation position. Within this we can examine how strategies to legitimize the various activities of the hybrid organisation, such as managing expectations or separating activities between two organisations for example, are contributory towards the continued entanglement (Callon, 1998) of the two sides of the hybrid. For my own research, hybridity has suggested new ways of examining how the Electricity Department and Oceanic Institute AB achieve a form of stability across their boundaries, and how they legitimize their activities to the various stakeholders. Is the creation of Oceanic Institute not primarily a vehicle for establishing the technology on the energy production market, but instead an attempt to convince stakeholders that the research being performed at the university is deserving of continued support? Has the “spin-‐off”
model instead become a legitimisation model through the split of activities between academic and industrial organisations? Has this been a natural, organic result of the work performed, or a decision made with advanced understanding of legitimacy issues?
Hybridity as a tool has done its job, identified and provided openings for the continued study of the nature of boundary crossing organisations.
References
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