Tobias Polzer successfully completed his Habilitation

A habilitation or venia legendi is certifying research excellence and didactical capacity. Dr. Polzer’s cumulative research portfolio, focusing on the concept of ‘hybridity’, makes theoretical and empirical contributions in the area of organization and management studies.

In various sub-disciplines of business administration, the concept of ‘hybridity’ has attracted considerable research interest in recent years, with varying foci. The articles of the habilitation view hybridity from the perspective of organizational research, focusing particularly on the meso-level, i.e. the level of organizations and organizational fields. Such a perspective is central to research on hybridity in other sub-disciplines of business administration as well, since a large part of business administration research relates to organizations. Conceptually, interactions in zones of meaning are understood as the as origin of hybridity. The public sector offers a relevant context for studying hybridity, as decades of reforms have increasingly blurred the boundaries between public, private, and non-profit spheres of meaning (regarding, for example, logics, practices and identities) in the provision of public services. The research agenda underpinning the habilitation aims to investigate how hybridity manifests, how it emerges, what types of hybridity exist, and what implications hybridity has for governance and management. In the six articles of the cumulative habilitation, these aspects are examined using different data and methods. To anchor the contributions, first, a structured literature review is conducted. Furthermore, editorials from special issues in professional journals are analyzed. This results in three focal dimensions that have received attention in scholarly discussion. Subsequently, the contributions of the articles of this habilitation are outlined and contextualized with respect to these three dimensions. Overall, the articles of this habilitation project make a conceptual contribution by unpacking hybridity as an ‘amoeba-like concept’ and offer deeper insights into current developments in public sector organizations and the organization of this sector.

Dr. Polzers publication are accessible via. Tobias Polzer - Publications - WU Vienna University of Economics and Business