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© 2017 CIPFA practices, and identities. Others have differentiated between hybrid organizations and hybrid modes or mechanisms (for example Seibel, 2015), as well as between governance modes, as for example, dimensions of accountability (Grossi and Thomasson, 2015). We think that certain institutional features of a ‘hybrid phenomenon’are the primary denominator—for instance, a specific rationality and motivation of actors that shape structures and activities of their institutional environment. In a similar vein, a growing number of researchers are using the perspective of institutional logics to analyse and explain hybridity—for example Thornton et al.(2012); Meyer et al.(2014); Mair et al.(2015); Argento et al.(2016); Skelcher and Smith (2017, p. 425 in this issue); and Høgvold Olsen et al.(2017, p. 393 in this issue). These ‘logics’ can coexist in parallel; they can be blended or remain in conflict with each other (see Mair et al., 2015, p. 730 for a typology of hybrids along such logical patterns). Consequently, hybridity is a situation in an organization with diverging institutional logics at play at both the organizational and individual levels (Skelcher and Smith, 2015, p. 434). These logics result in different organizational structures (for example in terms of board composition) and in varying governance modes (for example hierarchy or market mechanisms).

The disadvantage of the somewhat ubiquitous concept of hybridity is that almost all organizations and individuals tend to show some degree of hybridity, ie mixes of different logics (Brandsen and Karré, 2011). To adapt the title of Bozeman’s (1987) seminal work, we could claim that: