"De Facto Hybrid Organizations: A Research Analysis on a Sample of International Publicly Listed Companies".

Abstract

This project is about a research analysis based on a sample of international publicly listed companies built through the online data collection. The main argument is the concept of hybrid organizations, companies that pursue at the same time financial and social objectives. These hybrid organizations can be studied and analysed as an innovative phenomenon able to combine multiple resources such as human resources, activities and financing, aimed at satisfying the needs of the community pursuing at the same time an economic activity. The aim of this thesis is to investigate if in the international landscape there are companies that can be considered de facto hybrid organizations due to the fact that they are able to pursue at the same time a good economic-financial performance and a social objective. In order to carry out such analysis it has been used the price-to-earnings ratio as indicator of a good financial performance, while for the social performance it has been used the sustainability rating assigned to these companies by the European agency Standard Ethics. The sample of companies is made up of Chinese, Japanese, American, European and Non-European organizations that are publicly listed, so, for which, data are available online. Thus, the analysis is targeted at investigating the existence of any variables or factors that are relevant for the hybridity of these companies. Then, after having identified the presence of any statistically relevant variables, the importance and the meaning of these factors on the results obtained will be explored.

The thesis is organized in five chapters: in the first chapter a literature review of hybrid organizations has been made, and a brief excursus of the concepts of innovation and social innovation is presented, with a focus on the notion of Social Enterprise since it can be considered as a laboratory to understand the concept of hybrid organizations. Therefore, hybrid organizations, their organizational structure, their business model, their characteristics and distinctive elements, their type of governance and leadership, have been studied and explained in the first chapter. In the second chapter the process by which the sample of companies has been made and the sources of data that have been used are presented. Thus, the types of variables that have been collected and their meaning for the analysis are explained. Moreover, the logistic regression analysis with all its characteristics, the statistical program that has been used, the commands and the considerations that have been made, are presented and illustrated in detail. Finally, from a statistical point of view, a brief explanation and elaboration of the empirical results is given. The following three chapters are focused on the description and explanation of the empirical results. In particular, the third chapter presents the financial variable that from the analysis is resulted significative for the probability of companies to be de facto hybrid organizations. The fourth chapter is based on an overview of the sustainability policies and regulations in Europe and China given the fact that from the analysis emerges that these two countries are relevant for the probability of companies to be de facto hybrid organizations. In conclusion, in the fifth and last chapter the focus is on sustainability across sectors since the logistic regression analysis shows that high-tech industries are statistically relevant for the probability of companies to be de facto hybrid organizations.