The Emergence of Hybrid Organizational Forms: Combining Identity-Based Service Provision and Political Action

After the 1960s, women, Blacks, and other ethnic groups mapped political objectives onto a more traditional form of voluntary association, along with investing in direct political protest and advocacy for civil and social rights. One result was the development of a hybrid organizational form that combines advocacy and service provision as its core identity and thus faces distinctive environmental uncertainties and boundary conditions. This article provides a community ecology framework for analyzing the development of the service/advocacy organizational form. The author argues that hybrid forms of organization, by expanding the resource infrastructure and legitimacy available to identity-based organizations, play a critical role in anchoring the continued viability of identity-based service organizations under newly politicized conditions. Data are drawn from a study of national women’s and racial and ethnic minority organizations since 1955.