Hybrids of Hybrids? Plural Forms of Collaboration and the Social Value of Public Initiatives

New research efforts in strategic management and public administration have converged in their examination of how the interdependent action of public and private organizations can help create social value. We advance this discussion by showing how myriad forms of hybrid collaboration increase the value-creating potential of public service initiatives. Using a unique set of 24 public initiatives in three large emerging economies (Brazil, India, and South Africa), we examine three distinct hybrids–collaborations between governments and for-profit firms (“public-private”), between governments and non-profit organizations (“public-nonprofit”), and between multiple units of the public bureaucracy (“public-public”)–and assess in which conditions they are associated with social value creation, expressed in our cases as evidence of positive impact in target communities and populations. Our fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) of the cases not only revels alternative configurations consistent with positive impact, but also plural solutions involving more than one type of collaboration (“hybrids of hybrids”). We also find that each unique combination also depends on a host of contextual conditions involving the operational capacity of the state as well as environmental factors such as resource munificence and political stability. We use these configurations to inductively generate a new theoretical framework describing how plural forms interact with contextual conditions in the creation of positive social value.