Logic Salience : Navigating in institutional landscape of funding volatility and ideological disputes in nonprofit hybrid organizing

Abstract: The concept of institutional logics is key to those who investigate organizational change, especially those who seek to understand the tension and impact of combining the logics of market and mission. Such a combination of logics, being an espoused financial sustainability solution for the funding-scarce nonprofit sector, is an increasingly prominent phenomenon. While there are several studies on various ways in which logics co-exist in hybrid contexts, the role of actors in this institutional complexity has received lesser attention. The organizations of this study are nonprofits in Sweden and South Africa. Through qualitative methods, the role played by individual actors in negotiating multiple logics is examined. The findings suggest that nonprofit actors may express support for multiple logics, but they ultimately respond to them according to the logic that they identify themselves with the most, tied to the values and ideological preferences they hold.From these findings, a concept emerged. The concept of ‘logic salience’ is proposed and developed abductively by exploring it as an analytical tool throughout the remainder of the case organizations, which are situated in paradoxical and adversarial settings. The successive refinement of the concept constitutes both input and output of the abductive research approach. Specifically, three categories of individual logic salience are identified. These prompt various individual responses, which, in turn, condition organizational responses that have implications for nonprofit organizing and hybridity. In addition, three types of hybridity that give an indication of the viability of the market-mission hybrid form are also identified.Through logic salience, this dissertation theoretically accounts for both the enabling and constraining properties of logics and at the same time elucidates and strengthens the role of individual agency in organizational responses and actions. It contributes to the fields of institutional logics, institutional work and hybridity through a framework that illustrates a cycle that starts from influences from the institutional field down to the organizational and individual levels, and back to the institutional field, which thus exemplifies the interconnectedness of the external and internal environments. Apart from a concept that can be useful in studying and understanding how and why actors respond to multiple logics in particular ways, the dissertation also provides an update on the current funding challenges to which nonprofit organizations are increasingly exposed. These challenges have significance not only for practitioners but also for funding institutions, policymakers, research and societies considering the nonprofit third sector’s attributed role in addressing government and market failures.