Managing Competing Institutional Logics in Public–Private Joint Ventures

Abstract

Cross-sector inter-organizational partnerships, alliances and networks have become extremely popular. Yet, we may expect competing societal-level institutional logics to play an important role in cross-sector alliances, hence making their management central to alliance success. This article responds to the general research question: How do participants of public–private joint ventures manage competing institutional logics? Based on in-depth interviews we empirically characterize two competing logics in a cross-sector collaborative and identify two practices used to cope with them.

Key words:

• Institutional logics
• business–government relations
• joint ventures
• qualitative research

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Albert Serra, Marc Esteve and Tamyko Ysa who helped during different stages of the research and to two blind reviewers.

Notes

Sector differences that derive from societal-sector institutional logics are in line with empirical findings by scholars studying differences between the public and private sectors in terms of attitudes, personal values, motivation and organizational context (Crewson, 1997; Houston, 2000; Rainey and Bozeman, 2000; Poole and Gould-Williams, 2006; Lyons et al., 2006; Feeney, 2007; Nutt, 2006).

Explanations regarding different institutional logics between public and private sectors are also backed by public management scholars. Differences between private and public sectors have been highlighted regarding decision-making modes and level of constraints on managers (Nutt, 2006), openness to environment (Poole and Gould-Williams, 2006; Ring and Perry, 1985), control over personnel (Rainey and Bozeman, 2000) and the politics–administration divide (Svara, 1999; Peters, 2001; Goodnow, 2003; Meier and Bohte, 2006).

However, a major difference exists with respect to existing studies on competing institutional logics. We find competing societal institutional logics within an organization, while the cited studies look at the competing institutional logics within an organizational field.

Moreover, this finding responds partially to Wall and Connollys' (2009) call for more research on the interaction between public–private collaboratives and their external stakeholders.