Social Innovation Thriving on Hybridity? Lessons from a Street Paper Project for People Experiencing Homelessness in Germany

This article depicts the chemistry and trajectory of a street paper project involving people experiencing homelessness in Germany. More generally, it seeks to examine implications of hybrid approaches to prosocial organising which various initiatives throughout the Western world have adopted during...

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Main Author: Bode Ingo
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: De Gruyter 2024-12-01
Series:Journal of Organizational Sociology
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1515/joso-2024-0001
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author Bode Ingo
author_facet Bode Ingo
author_sort Bode Ingo
collection DOAJ
description This article depicts the chemistry and trajectory of a street paper project involving people experiencing homelessness in Germany. More generally, it seeks to examine implications of hybrid approaches to prosocial organising which various initiatives throughout the Western world have adopted during the last decades to achieve social innovation in an entrepreneurial way. The analysis builds on an embedded case study and a distinctive conceptual framework which combines institutionalist and praxeologic perspectives on modern organisations. The focus lies on how, in the course of time, the project under study processes various institutional logics and how the latter become intermingled ‘in action’. It is shown that, with the enactment of references from different ‘social worlds’, hybrid prosocial organising can feed into a robust organisational model. However, the en route encounter of disparate logics has paradoxical implications and is prone to undermine the model’s effectiveness. With the enactment of hybridity, ‘first-order’ success in terms of organisational survival comes with severe limitations concerning the ambition of crossing institutional boundaries for meeting the project’s key mission. Ironically, dynamics in and around the organisation tend to stabilise a settlement which hybrid ‘prosocial organising’ seeks to tackle.
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spelling doaj-art-34794c6ecd58461a8e44ffd9087fd0472025-08-20T02:40:18ZengDe GruyterJournal of Organizational Sociology2752-29972024-12-0131537510.1515/joso-2024-0001Social Innovation Thriving on Hybridity? Lessons from a Street Paper Project for People Experiencing Homelessness in GermanyBode Ingo0Institute of Social Work and Social Welfare, University of Kassel, Kassel, GermanyThis article depicts the chemistry and trajectory of a street paper project involving people experiencing homelessness in Germany. More generally, it seeks to examine implications of hybrid approaches to prosocial organising which various initiatives throughout the Western world have adopted during the last decades to achieve social innovation in an entrepreneurial way. The analysis builds on an embedded case study and a distinctive conceptual framework which combines institutionalist and praxeologic perspectives on modern organisations. The focus lies on how, in the course of time, the project under study processes various institutional logics and how the latter become intermingled ‘in action’. It is shown that, with the enactment of references from different ‘social worlds’, hybrid prosocial organising can feed into a robust organisational model. However, the en route encounter of disparate logics has paradoxical implications and is prone to undermine the model’s effectiveness. With the enactment of hybridity, ‘first-order’ success in terms of organisational survival comes with severe limitations concerning the ambition of crossing institutional boundaries for meeting the project’s key mission. Ironically, dynamics in and around the organisation tend to stabilise a settlement which hybrid ‘prosocial organising’ seeks to tackle.https://doi.org/10.1515/joso-2024-0001hybrid organisationshomeless assistanceinstitutionalismpraxeologic theorysocial innovation
spellingShingle Bode Ingo
Social Innovation Thriving on Hybridity? Lessons from a Street Paper Project for People Experiencing Homelessness in Germany
Journal of Organizational Sociology
hybrid organisations
homeless assistance
institutionalism
praxeologic theory
social innovation
title Social Innovation Thriving on Hybridity? Lessons from a Street Paper Project for People Experiencing Homelessness in Germany
title_full Social Innovation Thriving on Hybridity? Lessons from a Street Paper Project for People Experiencing Homelessness in Germany
title_fullStr Social Innovation Thriving on Hybridity? Lessons from a Street Paper Project for People Experiencing Homelessness in Germany
title_full_unstemmed Social Innovation Thriving on Hybridity? Lessons from a Street Paper Project for People Experiencing Homelessness in Germany
title_short Social Innovation Thriving on Hybridity? Lessons from a Street Paper Project for People Experiencing Homelessness in Germany
title_sort social innovation thriving on hybridity lessons from a street paper project for people experiencing homelessness in germany
topic hybrid organisations
homeless assistance
institutionalism
praxeologic theory
social innovation
url https://doi.org/10.1515/joso-2024-0001
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