Strategic Management in Hybrid Organizations

Many public service organizations have to deal with rapidly changing environments. Government offers less financial security than in the past and stimulates organizations to develop a market orientation. The focus of this article is explaining the shape of strategic management in public service organizations that have merely a public orientation (task organizations) and organizations that combine a public orientation with a market orientation (hybrid organizations). On the basis of four case studies it is concluded that task organizations also move in the direction of hybrid organizations. Strategic management in hybrid public service organizations is a dynamic process in which changing the organization context, i.e. metagovernance, seems to be the predominating dimension of strategic management.