MANAGEMENT OF HYBRID ORGANISATIONS: A CASE STUDY OF A RETAILING ‘NETWORK ORGANIZATION’ A Competitive Paper for IMP 2001 Lasse Mitronen, M.Sc. and Kristian Mölleri, Professor of Marketing Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration FINLAND ABSTRACT Hybrid organisations pose important theoretical and managerial questions. We examine a large Finnish retail organisation in order to identify and understand the challenges of hybrids or network organisations in a retailing context. The governance forms and processes identi- fied in the case organisation are discussed with a help of a proposed conceptual framework. We believe that the identified managerial implementations of these governance modes and processes will help us to understand also other hybrid organisations and the management of hybrids in general. Key words: retailing, hybrid organisations, network management, governance structures i Corresponding author: Kristian Möller, Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration, Department of Marketing POB 1210, FIN- 00101 Helsinki, FINLAND. Tel. +358 9 4313 8515, fax. + 358 9 4313 8660, email:
[email protected]. 1 INTRODUCTION Over the years increasing research has focused on interorganizational business relationships. These studies have primarily concentrated on the relationships between buyers and sellers, on interorganizational co-operation and coordination, and business networks. The extant re- search is characterized by different disciplinary backgrounds. Authors interested in the eco- nomic efficiency of interorganizational governance draw heavily from transaction cost eco- nomics. Those concentrating more on the behavioral and dynamic aspects of business relationships use often social exchange theory (Möller & Wilson, 1995; Möller 1994). The IMP-driven research has further expanded the focus into networks of organizations and into the evolution of networks (Håkansson & Snehota 1995).