Seminar – Competing for Good: How Organisational Hybridity Challenges Inter-Organisational Categorisation and Cross-Sector Value Creation

Dr Matthew Grimes, Indiana University

The process of inter-organisational categorisation, whereby leaders produce mental models regarding collaborative opportunities and competitive threats, can enable or challenge cross-sector value creation. Through a qualitative study of 46 leaders in the second-hand textiles market, the research illustrates how and under what conditions organisational hybridity leads decision makers to engage in morally-sharpened categorisation and thus more highly politicised responses toward other market actors. The findings and model extend theory regarding cross-sector collaboration, illustrating that such collaboration can be undermined by categorisation practices that compel efforts to control and reshape collective identities. Moreover, they extend research at the intersection of institutions and categories by revealing how settings characterised by multiple institutional logics and hybrid organisations can lead to divergent applications of the categorical imperative.

Paper co-authored by Dr Wesley Helms, Brock University.

Speaker bio

Matthew Grimes is as an Assistant Professor at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. He completed his graduate studies at Vanderbilt University and the University of Oxford. He was also recently appointed as an International Research Fellow at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Oxford. Matthew’s research focuses broadly on how business and innovation can be a force for good in society. As such, his published and ongoing work explores settings like social entrepreneurship, B Corporations, idea-stage entrepreneurship, and future technology. This work appears in the Academy of Management Review, the Academy of Management Journal, and the Journal of Business Venturing. He also currently serves as a member of the editorial review boards of all three of these journals.

There will be a light lunch served at the start of the session.

Contact Luke Slater if you wish to arrange a meeting with the speakers during their visit