Evaluations of Organizational Configurations: Does Hybrid Form or Logic Content Matter?

Hybrid organizing scholarship has considered various effects of organizational configurations, including evaluations from external audience members. Due to the particular focus of hybrid scholarship on organizations that are subject to market logic, however, it is difficult to determine whether hybrid form or market logic is most relevant to evaluators. We therefore conduct two online vignette experiments, one of which is preregistered. We confirm our hypothesis that the presence of market logic decreases evaluators intent to transact with the organization, mediated through moral legitimacy. We do not confirm our hypothesis, however, that hybrid form decreases intent to transact, mediated through cognitive legitimacy. We further find that the negative market logic effect does not vary by organizational field. Our explicit focus on market logic, and its moral legitimacy evaluations, forms our core contribution to hybrid organizing scholarship, which tends to heavily lean upon the categories scholarship to explain negative audience evaluations.