Accounting and accountability for managing diversity tensions in hybrid organisations

Abstract

Hybrid organisations are organisational forms that use different resources, governance models and institutional logics derived from public, private, for-profit and nonprofit. Hybridity can be referred to on multiple levels of analysis: macro-level related to the society, meso-level related to specific organisational fields or organisations, or micro-level related to groups or individual actors. This paper provides a comprehensive comment on the state of research on accounting and accountability themes in hybrid organisations. The paper also locates the articles included in this special section, identifying avenues for further research. The state of research in hybrid organisations shows that a growing number of studies focus on accounting and accountability practices in different types of hybrid organisations operating in different fields. This paper identifies diversity tensions in accounting and accountability for single hybrid organisations or networks operating at different levels, compromising multiple values and expectations of audiences/forums. The six articles in the special setion fill this gap in addressing questions of for who, for what, and where by exploring the multiple actors, values and forums involved in accounting and accountability practices in hybrid organisations.