The theater of innovation : developing skills to perform hybridity

Abstract

Multivocal identities have often been thought to provide social actors with more resources and opportunities over time than other "limited," singular identities. However, less is known about how organizations actually accomplish embodying multiple identities. By looking inside a hybrid organization, this paper uses ethnographic data to document how an organization successfully sustains its hybridity despite challenges associated with making multiple identity claims. The paper analyzes how the organization socializes individuals to perform its particular hybrid organizational identity. A common practice known as demonstrations served as an integrative practice-based mechanism enabling actors confronted by distinct social worlds, and norms, to enact otherwise competing roles and framings of their work so that their performances did not convey incompetence or betrayal of alternative normative expectations. The findings show that to successfully perform the organization's hybrid identity, the actors developed a transferable skill set, which enabled them to credibly deliver on their manifold roles as academic researchers, social hacktivists, and commercial product designers.