Toward a Discursive Approach to the Hybridization of Practice: Insights from the Case of Servitization in France

Overview & Synopsis

This paper analyzes how hybrid organizations and hybrid practices emerge and stabilize through discourse within organizational fields. Drawing on institutional logics theory, it examines how discourse contributes to the theorization and legitimation of hybrid organizing. Using a discourse analysis of 610 press articles on servitization in France, based on descending hierarchical classification, the study identifies two key mechanisms: (1) the renaming of practices and (2) the pivotal role of environmental institutional logics. The findings show how competing institutional logics (market, environmental, and social welfare) are progressively articulated through discourse, enabling the hybridization of practices at the field level. This paper contributes to research on hybrid organizations, institutional logics, and discourse analysis by shifting the focus from intra-organizational dynamics to field-level processes. It also provides insights into how sustainable practices such as servitization gain legitimacy and diffuse across heterogeneous actors. Hybrid practices incorporate conflicting institutional logics and are recognized for their capacity to cope with societal problems. Previous literature has concentrated on the hybridization mechanisms inherent in organizations. This focus on an entity has diverted attention away from equivalent mechanisms that operate in wider social systems -specifically, in organizational fields. In this article, I show how discourses can enable such mechanisms. To that end, descending hierarchical classifications were performed on media outlets to study the discourse on the emergence of servitization in France. The results reveal two original mechanisms enabled by discourses and supporting the hybridization of the practice under study: (1) practice renaming and (2) the pivotal role played by the institutional logic of environmental protection. Based on these results, I propose a model detailing how institutional logics and discourses interact to bring about a hybrid practice. This model offers original insights to develop knowledge on hybrid organizing and promote practices that realign business goals with those associated with social welfare and preservation of the natural environment.