Between State, Market and Community

Abstract

Hybrid organizations operate in complex and diversified institutional environments that combine characteristics of the state, the market, and the nonprofit sector. These environments impose challenges on the marketing of hybrid organizations. This article focuses on the challenges and dilemmas in the marketing of hybrid organizations by analysing the slogans of Dutch sheltered work companies. These slogans reflect the core values and distinctive competences of these organizations. Our analysis accentuates the tensions between the demands from the multiple domains and shows how a specific group of hybrid organizations – sheltered work companies – deals with these tensions in the formulation of their slogans.

Key words:

• Marketing
• hybrid organizations
• sheltered work companies
• slogans

Introduction

Sheltered work companies in the Netherlands have the task of providing jobs to persons that have to work under adapted circumstances due to their mental or physical disabilities. Sw-companies can be classified as hybrid organizations because they combine elements of public, private and nonprofit organizations. As a result, hybrid organizations need to synthesize different core values and demands from different strategic environments. The literature on hybrid organizations points towards challenges and dilemmas that result from this hybrid character (see Billis, 2010b; Brandsen et al., 2006; Schulz, 2007). The case of Dutch sw-companies illustrates these challenges and dilemmas. For instance, convincing employers to hire disabled people is one of the main challenges of sw-companies in the Netherlands. This raises the issue of how to ‘market’ the services of disabled people and, consequently, of sw-companies. A first approach is to focus on their strengths and capacities as regular employees, thus competing with other suppliers of employment services like temporary work agencies. Alternatively, sw-companies may focus on the needs of disabled employees and their potential contribution to a company's social image. In this approach, sw-companies accentuate their expertise in providing care and support for this specific group of employees. The choice of the marketing approach affects the external branding and marketing of sw-companies and therefore their image within their external environment.

The dilemmas and challenges sw-companies experience in designing their external branding and marketing are symptomatic for the marketing challenges of hybrid organizations in general. With this study, we want to contribute to the body of knowledge on the tensions, dilemmas and challenges involved in the marketing of hybrid organizations. The central question is: how do hybrid organizations like sw-companies deal with the marketing challenges caused by their hybrid character? To answer this question, we use a content analysis of the marketing slogans that are used by Dutch sw-companies. Slogans are the few words that a company uses in its external marketing to communicate succinctly the essence of the organization's benefit or to assist in its selling proposition. Slogans tend to state an organization's distinctive competence or unique value. Slogans are among the most repeated and most important words that an organization uses in its marketing communications (Dowling & Kabanoff, 1996). A well-known example of a slogan is Nike's ‘just do it’. A slogan provides continuity throughout different marketing communications and facilitates the establishment and maintenance of a strong brand identity (Dahlén & Rosengren, 2005; Mathur and Mathur, 1995). Reece et al. (1994) consider a good slogan as a key ingredient to establishing and maintaining a strong brand identity. Therefore, we assume that in their slogans sw-companies reflect their focal points in the orientation towards their differentiated strategic environments.

The empirical base of this article consists of two elements. First, we identify the challenges and dilemmas that sw-companies are confronted with by using the data from twenty open-ended interviews and document analysis from various studies on sw-companies in which the authors have been involved (see Fenger et al., 2011a,b; van der Torre et al., 2010). For these studies, annual reports of sw-companies, policy documents, strategic plans and websites were analysed and interviews with ten managing directors of sw-companies and ten experts in the field were conducted.

Secondly, we performed a content analysis of forty-nine slogans of Dutch sw-companies that we have collected. This content analysis reveals how sw-companies try to overcome the challenges of their hybrid character within the limited number of words that a slogan allows. To collect the slogans, we examined the websites of ninety-two Dutch sw-companies. This resulted in forty-nine slogans that could be analysed. Appendix 1 shows the forty-nine collected slogans. The slogans were independently coded by three researchers using the coding scheme in Appendix 2. Twenty-four slogans were coded with 100 per cent agreement between the three coders. Twenty slogans were coded identically by two coders, in which we decided to use the score the two researchers agreed upon. Five slogans were coded differently by all three coders. The final score for these slogans has been determined in a discussion between the three researchers.

Only forty-nine out of ninety-two sw-companies have formulated a marketing slogan. The possible reasons why forty-three of the sw-companies did not have a slogan on their website are beyond scope of this article. But a tentative suggestion as to why this may be the case is that those sw-companies do not feel the urge to spend much effort in external communication and are rather inward-oriented. Additional research on the development of marketing and strategic orientation is necessary to explain the absence of slogans for a large share of the sw-companies.

The structure of this article is as follows. The next section deals with the backgrounds of hybrid organizations. It briefly introduces the core characteristics of hybrid organizations and identifies strategic challenges that result from their hybrid character. In the following section, we claim that the multiple institutional environments of hybrid organizations complicate their marketing tasks. We discuss the challenges and dilemmas that are caused by the need to serve different institutional environments with different and sometimes even incompatible messages. Then we elaborate on the empirical domain of our article: the marketing challenges of Dutch sw-companies. We start by briefly introducing the tasks and characteristics of sw-companies and specifying the marketing challenges within this policy domain. After that, we analyse the ways in which sw-companies deal with these marketing challenges by presenting the results of a content analysis of the slogans of these sw-companies. Finally, we draw lessons on the marketing strategies of hybrid organizations, like sw-companies, concerning the challenges of dealing with multiple target audiences and sometimes even incompatible demands.

Hybrid Organizations

Within the academic disciplines of public administration and organization sciences, the recognition has grown that there is an extensive group of organizations that does not fit in the pure-type categories of public, private or nonprofit organizations but combine characteristics of different organizations (see for example: Billis, 2010a; Brandsen et al., 2006; Minkoff, 2002; van Twist and In ‘t Veld, 1999). These types of organizations are called ‘hybrid’ organizations (e.g. Emmert and Crow, 1988; Gunn, 2004; Koppell, 2003). Examples are universities (Mouwen and van Bijsterveld, 2000), hospitals (Putters, 2001, 2006), Social Services Corporations (Cooney, 2006), housing associations (Brandsen, 2006; Mullins and Pawson, 2010), and waste management organizations (Karré, 2011; Koerkamp and Camps, 2006). Although different authors present varying conceptualizations and definitions of hybrid organizations, they all accentuate the combination of features of distinct organizational forms (e.g. Brandsen et al., 2006; Chew, 2008; Hasenfeld and Gidron, 2005; Minkoff, 2002).

In the academic literature, two approaches can be distinguished on what specifically characterizes hybrid organizations. The first approach classifies organizations as hybrid because they mix elements of public and private organizations or they stand between market and state (see Emmert and Crow, 1988; Karré, 2011; Kickert, 2001; Koppell, 2003, 2007; Ménard, 2004; Perry and Rainey, 1988; van Twist and In ‘t Veld, 1999). This is a dichotomous line of reasoning in which the extremes are the public agency and the private enterprise (Karré, 2011; Perry and Rainey, 1988; Putters, 2001). The second approach considers hybrid organizations as organizations between state, market, and community (Billis, 2010b; Brandsen et al., 2005; Evers, 2005; Pestoff, 1992). Hybrids take up elements of organizations from three different ideal typical ‘domains’ or ‘spheres’. Thus, hybrid organizations combine the features of public, private and nonprofit organizations. In this article, we build upon this second approach. Figure 1 presents our perspective on hybrid organizations in a Venn diagram. It shows that there are two types of hybrid zones: (1) where two domains come together and (2) where three domains come together.

Figure 1 The different hybrid zones. Based on: Billis ( 2010b )

Characterizing public, private and nonprofit organizations

Defining hybrid organizations as organizations that combine the features of public, private and nonprofit organizations makes it necessary to provide more insight into these types of organizations. We will therefore briefly present the ideal typical characteristics of public, private and nonprofit organizations. Although these characteristics are necessarily brief and oversimplified, they form important building blocks in understanding the challenges and dilemmas in the marketing of hybrid organizations. Based on Streeck and Schmitter (1985), van Twist and In ‘t Veld (1999) and Billis (2010b), we distinguish nine dimensions on which public, private and nonprofit organizations can differ that are relevant for this article:

1.	The domain: the ‘sphere’ in which the organization operates;
2.	The guiding principle of coordination and allocation: the principle by which the domain is primarily ordered;
3.	The medium of exchange: the means by which power is allocated to specific actors;
4.	The ownership of the organization: the actor to which the organization belongs;
5.	The distinctive resources: the characteristic resources of that type of organization;
6.	Activities: the type of activities employed by the organization;
7.	Basis for the organization's strategies: the considerations the organization primarily has to take into account when developing its strategies;
8.	The direction of the management: the actor to which the management has to account; and
9.	The main values: the dominant values in the organization.

Table 1 provides a schematic overview of the distinctive characteristics of public, private and nonprofit organizations. Hybrid organizations have to act according to the different rules and values of the three organizational types. Looking at Table 1, this inevitably creates tensions as the rules and values are not always in line with each other and sometimes even conflict. In this article, we are interested in what this hybrid character implies for the marketing strategies of hybrid organizations. The next section discusses the challenges and tensions it imposes on the marketing strategies of hybrid organizations.

Table 1 : Ideal typical public, private and nonprofit organizations

	Public	Private	Nonprofit organizations
Characteristics of its domain
Domain	State	Market	Community
Guiding principle of co-ordination and allocation	Hierarchical control	Dispersed competition	Spontaneous solidarity
Principal medium of exchange	Coercion	Money	Esteem
Characteristics of the organization
Ownership	Citizens	Shareholders	Members
Distinctive resources	Taxes	Sales, fees	Dues, donations and legacies
Activities	Public duty	Commercial activities	Social activities
Strategy and organization based on	Political objectives	Market opportunities	Demands from the community
Direction of management	Superior policy body	Consumers	Community
Value orientation and central values	Public values	Economic values	Social values
	Legitimacy, obedience, loyalty, sense of honour, absence of pursuit of profit	Entrepreneurship, innovation, willingness to take risk, respect for contracts and investment aimed at survival	Solidarity, trust, responsibility, dignity, justice
Note: Source: Billis, 2010b; Brandsen et al., 2005; Karré, 2011; Streeck and Schmitter, 1985; van der Torre et al., 2010; van Twist and In ‘t Veld, 1999.

Marketing of Hybrid Organizations

According to Andreasen and Kotler (2008), marketing refers to the efforts of organizations to influence the behaviour of target audiences. Many authors accentuate that marketing can be seen as an exchange relationship between a member of the target audience and the organization (see e.g. Armstrong et al., 2009; Bagozzi, 1974, 1975; Houston, 1986; Houston and Gassenheimer, 1987; Kotler, 1972; Vargo and Lusch, 2004). The member of the target audience is asked by the organization to incur costs or to make sacrifices. The organization promises some benefits in return. In this article, we build our analysis of the challenges and dilemmas in the marketing of hybrid organizations upon this notion of marketing as an exchange relation. Slogans are viewed as instruments for organizations to point members of target audiences to the benefits of the organization to tempt them to behave in the way desired by the organization.

Marketing of hybrid organizations: Dealing with tensions in the demands from different environments

The first wave of academic literature on marketing focused on the marketing of private organizations (see for example: Addis and Podestà, 2005; Tadajewski, 2009) More recently, several authors pointed at the various distinctions between private sector marketing and the marketing of public and nonprofit organizations resulting from their unique characteristics (see for example: Burton, 1999; Gallagher and Weinberg, 1991; Lamb, 1987; Rotschild, 1979; Sargeant, 2005; Snavely, 1991). Synthesizing the main arguments of these authors, we can state that public and nonprofit sector marketing are considered to be more difficult particularly due their multiple target audiences, the multiple non-financial and sometimes conflicting objectives, the restrictions in the freedom to make their own choices, and increased public scrutiny. In this article, we argue that the marketing of hybrid organizations is even more difficult as hybrid organizations are forced to unite the target audiences and objectives from multiple institutional environments. We will elaborate on these difficulties in the next section.

As we have seen in the previous sections, the institutional environments of market, state and community may be considered as different worlds with their own rules and demands. Public, private or nonprofit organizations need to comply only with the demands from the institutional environment in which they find themselves in order to survive. Within the hybrid organization, different values have to be combined that may conflict and the organization has to find a balance in the different and sometimes even conflicting demands from the multiple target audiences. Of course, other organizations – for instance commercial enterprises – are also confronted with multiple target audiences like teenagers and the elderly. But we want to stress that the tensions imposed on these organizations by multiple target audiences are not as intense as these target audiences all come from the same institutional domain with its specific rules and values. In the remainder of this article, we will use the case of Dutch sw-companies as an illustration of the challenges and dilemmas that the hybrid character creates for an organization's marketing strategies.

Sheltered Work Companies

We start by providing some background information on sw-companies. Sw-companies have the social task of providing jobs to persons that need to work under adapted circumstances due to their psychological, mental or physical disability. This task is part of the implementation of the Sheltered Work Act (SWA) which originates from 1969. The sw-companies together offer jobs to over 90,000 disabled persons. These jobs can be internal or external. Internal jobs are jobs in the sheltered environment of the sw-company itself. External jobs are jobs at regular employers like guided jobs and secondment. In addition to offering jobs to disabled people, many sw-companies also choose to offer re-integration routes to other target groups like welfare recipients and ex-offenders. The Dutch sw-companies together offered over 64,000 routes to suitable jobs for other target groups in 2008 (van den Berg and Risseeuw, 2009). The type of jobs that sw-companies offer to their employees differ (Simons, 2009). In the past, the job supply was strongly focused on production activities like wood working, metal working, packing, and printing. In recent years however, the sw-companies increasingly focus on service activities like mail delivery, catering, cleaning, and maintenance of public gardens and parks.

Sheltered work companies as hybrid organizations

Sw-companies are a very good example of hybrid organizations. They combine characteristics of public, private as well as nonprofit organizations. First, sw-companies have the characteristics of private organizations as provider of goods and services to customers. Their customers are regular employers and consumers of the goods and services they provide. Sw-companies compete with other enterprises in the market like cleaning companies or temporary work agencies. Many sw-companies also compete with other organizations offering training and support for non-disabled, unemployed people, particularly those receiving social assistance or unemployment benefits. As government subsidies are not sufficient to fund all statutory activities of sw-companies, they need to find opportunities to generate income from the market. This implies that sw-companies need to behave according to the market logic by searching for market opportunities and developing strategies to compete with other organizations in their market segments.

Secondly, sw-companies have the characteristics of public organizations as implementers of the SWA. Municipalities have the legal responsibility for the execution of the SWA and assign sw-companies as the executors of that policy. Therefore, sw-companies are confronted with a hierarchical relationship with the municipality as the superior political body that they have to obey.

Thirdly, sw-companies have the characteristics of nonprofit organizations as they are concerned with the task of offering jobs to disabled people in order to maintain or develop their labour skills. These activities are aimed at increasing the welfare of disabled people and, subsequently, contributing to a better society in general. Not surprisingly, many Dutch sw-companies originated from charity initiatives in local communities. Their aim was to provide care, basic means of existence, and a social network for people with severe disabilities. As nonprofit organizations, sw-companies need to reflect the values of the community that it serves.

Marketing of Sheltered Work Companies: Dealing with Different Demands from the Environments

From the previous section, it follows that sw-companies need to realize commercial, public and societal goals: being economically healthy, execute the SWA and offer labour opportunities to disabled people to maintain or develop their labour skills. To realize these goals, sw-companies are dependent on three strategic environments: the market (regular employers and consumers), the state (municipalities) and the community (disabled people and the citizens in general). Like many other hybrid organizations, sw-companies are confronted with multiple target audiences. What emerged from our institutional analysis – based on twenty open ended interviews and document analysis from previous research of the authors in this field – was that sw-companies have to show different ‘identities’ to their target audiences to meet all their demands. The different identities are:

•	a qualitatively high and efficient production factory and service provider;
•	a recruitment agency that provides productive and motivated personnel for employers;
•	an agency that effectively and efficiently implements the SWA for municipalities;
•	a safe working environment for disabled people;
•	a charitable institution that cares for the needs of disabled people in their community.

The need for sw-companies to show all these different identities imposes a great marketing challenge on sw-companies because it demands a unification of messages and images that are diverging and sometimes even contrasting. Besides, the different preferred identities of one domain have the risk of creating a negative image of the sw-company in another domain. Table 2 shows the possible risks of the different preferred identities in the other domains.

Table 2 : Different identities of sw-companies and their potential risks

Target group	Preferred identity of the sw-company	Possible expressions in images or slogans	Possible risks of the preferred identity towards the other target groups
Market	A qualitatively high and efficient production factory and service provider	Emphasize its production capacities	To the state: image of using tax money for commercial activities
	A recruitment agency that provides productive and motivated personnel for employers	Show hard working persons	To the community: image of misuse of disabled people
State	An agency that effectively and efficiently implements the Sheltered Work Act for municipalities	Connecting to the local government and its policies e.g. showing the logo of the local government	To community: impression of bureaucracy
			To the market: image of a bureaucratic organization with many rules and regulations to comply with
Community	A safe working environment for disabled people	Showing happy disabled people in a peaceful working environment	To the market: impression that the sw-companies is for ‘weak’ and ‘needful’ people
	A charitable institution that cares for the needy disabled people of their community	The good social deeds of the organization	To the state: Creating dependency through unaffordable high level of care in an age of financial crisis

Marketing choices of sheltered work companies

After having identified the multiple institutional environments and target groups of sw-companies, we now turn to their actual marketing strategies. As stated in the introduction of this article, marketing slogans can be considered as the most recognizable and continuous marketing expressions of organizations. Therefore, the analysis of marketing slogans reveals how this specific group of hybrid organizations deals with the challenge of communicating to multiple target audiences with messages and images that are diverging and sometimes even contrasting.

As stated earlier, we performed a content analysis of forty-nine marketing slogans of sw-companies, using the coding scheme in Appendix 2. According to our earlier characterization of hybrid organizations, we clustered the slogans into one of the following categories: (1) market-oriented slogans, (2) state-oriented slogans, (3) community-oriented slogans, (4) slogans aimed at the hybrid zone between market and community, (5) slogans aimed at the hybrid zone between market and state, (6) slogans aimed at the hybrid zone between state and community, and (7) fully hybrid slogans. Figure 2 shows the distribution of the slogans into these categories. The numbers in Figure 2 correspond with the list of slogans in Appendix 1. Hereafter, we will elaborate on these findings.

Figure 2 Categorization of the slogans of Dutch sw-companies

Market-oriented slogans

Market-oriented slogans emphasize the quality and competitiveness of the sw-company, its products, and its services. The slogans are aimed at convincing market parties to purchase the goods and services of the sw-company, including the hiring of disabled people as employees. These market parties may include local municipalities in their roles of business partners. Within this cluster, three groups may be distinguished. Slogans in the first group focus on sw-companies as producers of goods and services. This might look obvious at first sight, but essentially what is communicated here is the image of a sw-company as a regular subcontractor, offering goods and services that – almost coincidentally – are delivered by disabled employees. Slogans that reflect this image are for example ‘Good work’ or ‘Strong in work’. A second group within the cluster of market-oriented slogans accentuates the role of sw-companies as temporary work agencies or recruitment firms. Again, the fact that these companies offer disabled people as employees is not communicated through their marketing slogan. An example of a slogan from this group is ‘Suitable personnel’. Finally, there are slogans that represent both activities at the same time, like ‘Partner for production and personnel’. This analysis clearly shows that in the market environment, sw-companies choose to obfuscate that their services are delivered by or concern a specific group of employees: disabled people. What seems to be important is that they are equipped to compete with other organizations offering similar goods and services. Market-oriented slogans form the biggest cluster. Twenty-four of the forty-nine analysed slogans can be classified accordingly.

State-oriented slogans

State-oriented slogans focus on the role of sw-companies as implementing agencies of government policies. They accentuate the public values that sw-companies serve. Only one of the analysed slogans was classified as a state-oriented slogan. This was the slogan ‘Dukdalf helps people on benefit to get a job’.

Community-oriented slogans

Five of the forty-nine slogans were classified as community-oriented slogans. These slogans accentuate social values and are concerned with the general interest of society. The clearest community-oriented slogans used by sw-companies were ‘With us people come first’ and ‘People deserve it!’ These slogans show that the sw-company is concerned with the well-being of people, and reflect the image of sw-companies as caring institutions. This might tempt disabled people to trust the good intentions of the sw-company and be as cooperative as they can. To the general public, the image of a valuable organization that does good deeds is communicated. With this message, sw-companies seem to strive for support from citizens for their existence, although the concrete benefits for citizens are unclear.

Slogans aimed at the hybrid zone between market and community

Fourteen slogans were positioned in the hybrid zone between market and community. Some slogans combine both the social and economic orientation of the sw-company. Examples of these slogans are ‘For people and work’ or ‘Work for people, people for work’. Although profoundly vague, sw-companies that choose to position their marketing slogan within this cluster express the specific character of the goods and services they deliver in their external communication. They clearly distinct themselves from suppliers who offer similar goods and services with regular employees. This cluster also contains slogans in which both the economic and societal goals of sw-companies are included, but that are less clear about where the organization aims at. Examples are slogans like ‘Where development works’ or ‘That works for everyone’. It is unclear where the word ‘works’ exactly refers to.

Slogans aimed at the hybrid zone between market and state

Only two slogans have been categorized within this hybrid zone: ‘Leaders in execution’ and ‘We can do more than you think’. Characteristic for both slogans is that the sw-companies present themselves as agents that execute tasks on behalf of a principal. However, there is a great deal of indistinctiveness about the character of the principal, this can be state actors as well as market parties. The content analysis does not enable us to explain this indistinctiveness. Therefore, we cannot conclude whether this is a deliberate choice or an accidental consequence. However, from a marketing perspective it is unclear what kind of behaviour is required with these slogans and from whom.

Slogans aimed at the hybrid zone between community and state

With these slogans, the public and social objectives coincide. The slogans do not directly appeal to the execution of a government policy but assert the social goal behind it. In this cluster, sw-companies position themselves as organizations that contribute to the development of (disabled) people and through this comply with the policy goal of reducing the benefit ratio of disabled people. We classified the following three slogans within this hybrid zone: ‘Brings people and employment closer together’, ‘Work for everybody!’ and ‘Making work possible’. In contrast with some of the slogans aimed at the other hybrid zones, these slogans seem to communicate a somewhat clearer image to their external environment. This image basically reflects that sw-companies are good partners that contribute to social objectives, which also underlie public policy. This makes them convincing partners for state and society.

Hybrid slogans

Hybrid slogans similarly address all three institutional environments of sw-companies. In our analysis, we did not find any slogan that managed to do so. This seems to confirm the analysis that the messages and images that sw-companies present to their different environments may diverge and sometimes even are conflicting. Developing hybrid slogans ultimately leads to abstract slogans that must cover a wide range of demands. A good slogan needs to enable an organization's stakeholders to distinguish it from other organizations that offer similar services. An example of a slogan that unites all three domains might have been ‘Services for employers, municipalities and clients’. A slogan like this not only fails to connect to each of the target groups, but also obfuscates the core business of the organization for each of the target groups. Therefore, from a theoretical perspective it is understandable that we failed to identify a fully hybrid slogan. However, empirically it implies that hybrid organizations have trouble with communicating a recognizable image to all of their important stakeholders.

Implications and Conclusions

In this article, we have argued that hybrid organizations operate within different strategic environments and have to deal with multiple target audiences. Therefore, they are forced to synthesize the characteristics of public, private and nonprofit organizations. Put otherwise: they have to be ‘a commercial enterprise, a government agency, and a social enterprise in one’.

The case of the Dutch sw-companies illustrates in practice the different demands from the different institutional environments. We have clearly shown that in case of the sw-companies, these demands to some extent are hard to unite. The competitive position of a sw-company compared to other (regular) suppliers of similar goods and services does not in purely economic terms benefit from its image of an institution that provides high-quality care to the disabled. This is due to the general (but sometimes prejudiced) view that disabled employees are less productive than regular employees. Therefore, most marketing activities imply a choice in the environments that are specifically addressed and the environments that are neglected.

By analysing the marketing slogans of Dutch sw-companies, we have been able to identify which (combinations of) identities these organizations communicate to their external environments. Three important conclusions could be drawn from this analysis.

Studying slogans provides insights in the marketing choices of hybrid organizations

Although slogans are usually phrased as short and simple sentences, our analysis reveals that they clearly reflect the image and strategic position of the sw-companies. There is a clear variation on the values these organizations communicate and the target audiences they wish to address. Studies on private sector marketing show how slogans create the images of organizations (Dahlén & Rosengren, 2005; Reece et al., 1994). The insight that these slogans also reflect the value-orientation of hybrid organizations may be useful for future research on the identities, strategies and marketing of hybrid organizations.

The slogans of sw-companies are primarily addressed to the market

Our analysis of the slogans shows that sw-companies are clearly market-oriented. Twenty-four out of forty-nine slogans are exclusively addressed to the market and present the sw-companies as competitors in the market of goods and services. Another sixteen slogans can be clustered aimed at the hybrid zones between state and market or between community and market. Apparently most sw-companies that have developed a slogan consider competing for contracts to perform certain tasks or to deliver personnel as their most important strategic marketing challenge. This is consistent with findings from our interviews, in which managers of sw-companies were often characterized as entrepreneurs rather than as managers from caring institutions of civil servants (see Fenger et al., 2011b). As we do not have insights into the strategic orientations of the sw-companies that did not develop slogans, we need to be careful with the implications of these findings. It might well be that the sw-companies that did not develop a marketing slogan are the companies that are less convinced of the necessity of external marketing.

However, for the group of companies that have developed a slogan, it is remarkable that although the budget of sw-companies is for almost 70 per cent provided by local municipalities, these local municipalities are not the main target group for the slogans of sw-companies. A possible explanation for this is that, until recently, the budget of sw-companies was calculated and awarded automatically based on the number of clients. The revision of the SWA in 2008 enabled local municipalities to partially deviate from these fixed sums. Although sw-companies depend on municipalities for additional activities, until recently there has been limited need for sw-companies to invest in the relationship with local municipalities. This finding is consistent with the assumptions of the resource dependence theory: as the flows of resources from municipalities to sw-companies are guaranteed and stable, sw-companies will put most effort in trying to obtain additional resources from other, more insecure sources (see: Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978). In this case, these resources are to be found in delivering products and services to market parties.

The minority of sw-companies presents hybrid slogans

Only nineteen out of forty-nine sw-companies present slogans that reflect their hybrid character. Almost two-thirds of the sw-companies present ‘pure’ slogans oriented to one domain, the remaining sw-companies present mixed slogans which are oriented towards multiple target audiences. We have not found slogans that are directed to all three institutional domains simultaneously. We have concluded in our analysis that the slogans aimed at the mixed zones tended to be rather unclear in the behaviour they desire from the target audiences. This was especially true for the slogans in the hybrid zones between state and market and between market and community.

Although sw-companies clearly are hybrid organizations, it appears that this hybrid character is not necessarily reflected in their marketing strategies as they appear from their slogans. This brings forward the question what this implies for the strategic orientation of these organizations. Unfortunately, our analysis does not allow insights into that, but it clearly illustrates the necessity to further investigate the marketing strategies of hybrid organizations.

In this article, we have argued that hybrid organizations are characterized by multiple institutional environments on which they all depend. These institutional environments have different and sometimes even diverging demands from the organization. Our analysis shows that in their marketing slogans, Dutch sw-companies (inevitably) neglect some of the target audiences needed for the realization of the organizations goals. As a slogan is assumed to reflect the core values of an organization, this implies that a large share of the sw-companies is neglecting one or more of these environments not only in their slogans, but also in their general marketing strategies and perhaps even in their organizational strategies. This might impose dangers on the survival of the unique hybrid character of the organization. In their slogans, Dutch sw-companies have particularly addressed their attractiveness as commercial partners and their social basis of care. In other words, the institutional environments of market and community have received sufficient attention, but the government has been underexposed. This could make them vulnerable, especially in times when sw-companies are criticized for their disappointing achievement of the policy goals and large cutbacks in government spending are planned. By neglecting the government in their marketing strategies, sw-companies might risk to ‘orphanate’ or ‘alienate’ themselves from the government.

The challenges of designing marketing strategies for multiple target groups with diverging demands are not unique for sw-companies. Other hybrid organizations like housing associations, hospitals or universities and educational institutions are confronted with similar challenges, and appear to be similarly struggling with the challenges of multiple target audiences and incompatible demands. In this article, we have shown that hybrid organizations fail to reflect the multiplicity of their environments in their slogans. They focus on communicating a targeted message to one or more specific target audiences, rather than communicating an abstract, integrated message to all different target audiences. This may trigger the danger of alienating one or more of the strategic environments. This observation calls for a further analysis of the marketing strategies of hybrid organizations.

Appendix 1: Slogans of Dutch sw-companies

English translation
1. Through work to work
2. With us people come first
3. People deserve it!
4. The basis for growth
5. Making work possible
6. Work for everyone!
7. Dukdalf helps people on benefit to get a job
8. Just working.
9. For people and work
10. People who make it
11. That works for everyone
12. A fascinating company
13. The benefit of work
14. Where development Works
15. Reestmond moves you
16. People and work
17. Highway to work!
18. The power of labour
19. Work that works
20. Versatile company with exceptional professionals
21. Performs immensely
22. Your work our profession
23. Good work
24. Partner for personnel and production
25. Suitable personnel
26. The Meergroep works!
27. Our people, your work
28. Nice work
29. Versatile craftsmanship
30. Entrepreneurship with people
31. Colourful and versatile
32. Strong in work
33. Uncommonly good at work
34. Your work. Our hands
35. Just good at work
36. A versatile partner
37. Human work craftsmanship
38. Partner in social entrepreneurship
39. Handy
40. Wezo, valuable!
41. That works!
42. We can do more than you think!
43. We like to work for you!
44. Leaders in execution
45. Working on work
46. Brings people and work closer together
47. A clean city and work for the people of Rotterdam
48. Talent works
49. Work for people, people for work

Appendix 2: Coding scheme for the content analysis of the slogans of Dutch sw-companies

Category	Item	Examples
Market	Personnel	All words that concern the offering of personnel; personnel, staff, work people
	Production and services	Words referring to (the production or provision of) products and services; goods, services, production, craftsmanship
	Corporate social responsibility	All words referring to the improvement of the image of an organization; social image; social enterprise
	Good feeling (intrinsic/emotional)	All words referring to the good feeling you get when being a customer of the sw-company; Makes you feel good; improves your self-image
	Economic values	All words that relate to economic or commercial values; efficiency, effectiveness
State	Implementation of policy regulations	Words referring to the execution of a public assignment; executor, implementer; Wsw, Wwb
	Public values	All words that relate to public values; loyalty, obedience
Community	Better society	Words pointing at the end-state in which society has ‘improved’; all people have a job, everybody participates
	Improve the well-being of disabled people	Words directed at the end-state in which the well-being of disabled people has ‘improved’; makes you feel more confident, makes you part of society
	Social values	All words that relate to social values; solidarity, love, humanity