ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to apply the “hybridity-lens” on Austrian public universities and to develop a better understanding of the different stakeholders’ rationalities involved. We highlight various avenues of value creation connected with different aims and stakeholders. Especially, the ambiguity of performance becomes obvious, when we take different performance rationalities into account.
The findings of this longitudinal study indicate a number of things in relation to Hybrid Organisations (HYBORGs) and value creation: First, hybridity and ambiguity of different kind are not only a problem but can be also understood as a solution. Second, tactics plays an important role in order to understand the strategy-performance link. Third, we can support the perspective on HYBORGs as a space to live adequately with the handling of multi-rationalities. Therefore, value creation in HYBORGs cannot be interpreted as a linear process, but rather as parallel processes of different rationalities that sometimes even oppose each other – for the sake of various stakeholders. This opposition may not always be something negative. On the contrary, fruitful tensions may nurture the development of new questions that can be valuable in the long run for research, teaching and third mission rationalities.
