Hybridization in government–civil society organization relationships: An institutional logic perspective

Abstract This article builds a theoretical institutional logic framework to understand how distinctive institutional logics, specifically within the relationships between government and civil society organizations (CSOs), shape organizational hybridity. The present study, contextualized within a community development initiative in Seoul, South Korea, illuminates how government efforts to foster civil society lead to contested or contradictory organizational hybridity. Two types of organizational hybridity result, one government‐centered and another civil society‐centered. The analysis identifies six hybridizing mechanisms that induce organizational hybridity. Three of these mechanisms illustrate how a hierarchical, regulatory, and coercive logic of government induces the government‐centered organizational form. The second, CSO‐centered hybrid form reveals three contrasting mechanisms in which the CSOs and government are embedded in multiple, sometimes contradictory logics that reflect the plural identities of multiple CSOs.