Hybrid Organizations as Strategic Alliances: Theoretical and Practical Issues in Organizational Combinations

The phenomenon of hybridization, through which two or more extant firms form a new firm, raises significant questions for both scholars and managers. This paper outlines the unique characteristics common to these strategic alliances and shows how these characteristics are not addressed by extant theory, which focuses on sovereign organizations, rather than on alliances among sovereign firms. We than direct attention toward a set of concepts which form a foundation for further development of a theory of hybrid organization.