Publications

April 2024
Article

An Integrative Model of Hybrid Governance: The Role of Boards in Helping Sustain Organizational Hybridity

By: Anne-Claire Pache, Julie Battilana and Channing Spencer

Hybrid organizations must sustainably attend to multiple goals embedded in different institutional spheres. Past research has highlighted the value for hybrids in recruiting board members representing different logics to avoid attentional drifts; yet, diverse boards... View Details

Keywords: Governing and Advisory Boards; Business or Company Management; Organizational Structure

August 2022 (Revised June 2024)
Exercise

How Should Netflix Add an Ad-Supported Tier?

By: Elie Ofek and Olivier Toubia

In the summer of 2022, it became clear that Netflix would introduce an ad-supported tier alongside its existing subscription plans in the near future. Speculation abounded as to the details of the new tier: How many minutes of advertising would it include? What picture... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Television Industry; Price; Marketing Strategy; Digital Platforms; Customer Value and Value Chain; Competitive Strategy; Customer Satisfaction; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

2022
Chapter

Sustainability for People and the Planet: Placing Workers at the Center of Sustainability Research

By: Julie Yen, Julie Battilana and Emilie Aguirre

Though workers face a series of critical challenges in contemporary work organizations, they are often overlooked in conversations about sustainable business. In this chapter, we argue that prioritizing the rights and well-being of workers is a core dimension of... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Employees; Well-being; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Structure; Social Issues

August 2021
Article

Crowdsourcing Memories: Mixed Methods Research by Cultural Insiders-Epistemological Outsiders

By: Tarun Khanna, Karim R. Lakhani, Shubhangi Bhadada, Nabil Khan, Saba Kohli Davé, Rasim Alam and Meena Hewett

This paper examines the role that the two lead authors’ personal connections played in the research methodology and data collection for the Partition Stories Project—a mixed-methods approach to revisiting the much-studied historical trauma of the Partition of British... View Details

Keywords: Mixed Methods; Insider-outsiders; Myth Of Informed Objectivity; Hybrid Research; Oral Narratives; Research; Analysis; India

March–April 2019
Article

The Dual-Purpose Playbook

By: Julie Battilana, Anne-Claire Pache, Metin Sengul and Marissa Kimsey

Corporations are being pushed to dial down their single-minded pursuit of financial gain and pay closer attention to their impact on employees, customers, communities, and the environment. But changing an organization’s DNA may require upending the existing business... View Details

Keywords: Hybrid Organizing; Business And Society; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business Model; Goals and Objectives; Organizational Structure; Leadership

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2018
Article

Cracking the Organizational Challenge of Pursuing Joint Social and Financial Goals: Social Enterprise as a Laboratory to Understand Hybrid Organizing

By: Julie Battilana

While in recent decades the social and business sectors have evolved on fairly separate tracks, today companies are increasingly expected to generate social value in addition to profit. As a result, they also increasingly face the distinct challenge of pursuing social... View Details

Keywords: Hybrid Organizations; Hybrid Organizing; Multiple Goals; Social Enterprise; Goals and Objectives; Organizational Design; Organizational Culture

January 2018
Article

The Effect of Cost Sharing on an Employee Weight Loss Program: A Randomized Trial

By: Leslie K. John, Andrea Troxel, William Yancy, Joelle Y. Friedman, Jingsan Zhu, Lin Yang, Robert Galvin, Karen Miller-Kovach, Scott Halpern, George Loewenstein and Kevin Volpp

Purpose: We tested the effects of employer subsidies on employee enrollment, attendance, and weight loss in a nationally-available weight management program.
Design: A randomized trial tested the impact of employer subsidy: 100%; 80% 50% and a hybrid 50% subsidy... View Details

Keywords: Affordable Care Act (ACA); Subsidies; Weight Loss; Obesity; Incentives; Behavioral Economics; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Health Disorders; Health Care and Treatment; Compensation and Benefits; United States

2017
Chapter

On Hybrids and Hybrid Organizing: A Review and Roadmap for Future Research

By: Julie Battilana, Marya Besharov and Bjoern Mitzinneck

The purpose of this chapter is to advance research on hybrids by bringing together work from these multiple perspectives; identifying common themes in the antecedents, challenges, opportunities, and management strategies associated with hybridity and highlighting... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Organizational Design; Research

September–October 2017
Article

Blurring the Boundaries: The Interplay of Gender and Local Communities in the Commercialization of Social Ventures

By: Stefan Dimitriadis, Matthew Lee, Lakshmi Ramarajan and Julie Battilana

This paper examines the critical role of gender in the commercialization of social ventures. We argue that cultural beliefs about what is perceived to be appropriate work for each gender influence how founders of social ventures incorporate commercial activity into... View Details

Keywords: Community; Cultural Beliefs; Social Enterprise; Gender; Local Range; Commercialization; Culture

Article

Advancing Research on Hybrid Organizing—Insights from the Study of Social Enterprises

By: Julie Battilana and Matthew Lee

Hybrid organizations that combine multiple organizational forms deviate from socially legitimate templates for organizing and thus experience unique organizing challenges. In this paper, we introduce and develop the concept of hybrid organizing, which we define as the... View Details

Keywords: Hybrid Organizations; Social Enterprise; Organizational Structure; Social Entrepreneurship

2014
Article

The Governance of Social Enterprises: Mission Drift and Accountability Challenges in Hybrid Organizations

By: Alnoor Ebrahim, Julie Battilana and Johanna Mair

We examine the challenges of governance facing organizations that pursue a social mission through the use of market mechanisms. These hybrid organizations, often referred to as social enterprises, combine aspects of both charity and business at their core. In this... View Details

Keywords: Governance; Hybrid Organizations; Nonprofit; Performance Measurement; Legal Form; Agency Theory; Stakeholder Management; Mission and Purpose; Social Enterprise; Corporate Accountability

2013
Working Paper

Entrepreneurs, Firms and Global Wealth since 1850

By: G. Jones

This working paper integrates the role of entrepreneurship and firms into debates on why Asia, Latin America and Africa were slow to catch up with the West following the Industrial Revolution and the advent of modern economic growth. It argues that the currently... View Details

SSRN

Article

In Search of the Hybrid Ideal

By: Julie Battilana, Matthew Lee, John Walker and Cheryl Dorsey

In the first large-scale, quantitative study of nascent social entrepreneurs, researchers from Harvard Business School and Echoing Green examine the rise of hybrid organizations that combine aspects of nonprofits and for-profits and the challenges hybrids face as they... View Details

Keywords: Social Entrepreneurship; Organizational Design