Polycratic governance in hybrid organisations: The re-enchantment of collegiality

Abstract

Due to urgent societal challenges, organisations increasingly prioritise principles of hybrid value creation over capitalist efficiency rationales. Bureaucratic governance arrangements are widely regarded as detrimental to these organisations and their capacity to drive social change and innovation. Yet, bureaucratic governance continues to dominate the organisational landscape, while alternative approaches remain largely absent or underdeveloped. In this article, we address this puzzle and explore the re-enchantment of collegiality as a polycratic intra-organisational governance concept. Our research is based on empirical evidence from two social enterprises, of which one failed and one succeeded, with a collegiality governance approach. We find that certain elements of traditional collegiality can be particularly problematic in practice and propose a neo-collegial framework that we regard as particularly suitable for the governance of hybrid organisations.