Operating on Institutional Boarderland

Sammanfattning: Demands for a clear-cut identity and solid results are large in today's audit society, and create dilemmas for organizations with multifaceted structures that have diverse and difficult missions to reconcile. State owned companies are in particular subject to these conditions due to their hybridity as they operate at the intersection between the market and the public sector. Based on qualitative research, through a multiple case study research design, this study aims to provide answers on how the complexity of multiple institutional demands is handled by state owned companies, and if there are any characteristics special to their behavior. This is done by studying the organizational responses state owned companies employ towards institutional demands exerted upon them. Given the results presented the study concludes that state owned companies employ a wide range of different responses to institutional demands imposed on them and that the response behavior in these companies is affected by feelings of need for extra responsibility and role model behavior. The findings moreover demonstrate that the responsibility and role model factors can be linked to state owned companies' hybrid nature. As a result of these findings this study presents support for that organizational responses to institutional demand, within the context of state owned companies, should be studied in closer relation to organizational hybridity aspects by considering the factors of extra responsibility and role model behavior that these companies seem to be perceiving.