Academic entrepreneurial hybrids: Accounting and accountability in the case of MegaRide

Highlights

• The paper addresses how multiple values shape accounting and accountability practices.

• The focus is on academic spin-offs as hybrid knowledge-intensive organizations.

• The study analyses the Italian academic spin-off MegaRide.

• It shows the interplay between accounting and accountability and hybrid academic entrepreneurial logics.

Abstract

The current paper focuses on how multiple values shape accounting and accountability practices in hybrid organizations. It concentrates on the complex domain of academic spin-offs, more fully described as hybrid knowledge-intensive organizations, aiming to understand how accounting and accountability practices can be constitutive of hybrid academic entrepreneurial logics and identities and how these, in turn, favor the development of accounting and accountability practices. The study employs a theoretically informed in-depth single case study of the academic spin-off MegaRide of the University of Naples Federico II (Italy) for the period January to May 2021. The findings show how, in MegaRide, hybrid academic entrepreneurial identities emerged at both the individual and organizational levels, leading to successful technology transfer, with an undeniable impact on the local context and society.

Introduction

This paper addresses the growing debate on hybridity and hybrid organizations (e.g., Battilana, Besharov, & Mitzinneck, 2017; Battilana & Lee, 2014; Grossi, Kallio, Sargiacomo, & Skoog, 2020; Grossi, Reichard, Thomasson, & Vakkuri, 2017; Johanson & Vakkuri, 2018; Maier, Meyer, & Steinbereithner, 2016; Pache & Santos, 2013). Hybrid organizations rely upon and mobilize resources, governance structures, accountability practices and logics derived from different sectors (public, private for-profit and non-profit) with divergent goals (Battilana & Lee, 2014; Pache & Santos, 2013), governance models, control systems, and accountability mechanisms (Grossi et al., 2017; Johanson & Vakkuri, 2018). The multidimensional character of these settings, with varying identities, organizational forms and institutional logics, configures a value pluralism, potentially causing organizational “mission-drift” and diverging/conflicting logics to be accommodated for greater public value creation (Vakkuri & Johanson, 2021; Vakkuri, Johanson, Feng, & Giordano, 2021). An overlooked issue pertains to how multiple values shape accounting and accountability practices, and vice versa, in hybrid organizations, which is the focus of this study. There is no consensus on the development of accounting and accountability in hybrids, where more than one type of value can be worthwhile or important (Castellas, Stubbs, & Ambrosini, 2019), influencing these practices. On the one hand, actors with divergent values and goals may limit the identification of a common mission for the organization, negatively impinging its ability to value and disclose results and to meet all stakeholders’ needs, due to competing interests (Abdullah, Khadaroo, & Napier, 2018; Hyndman & McConville, 2018). On the other, multiplicity is somehow regarded as an advantageous factor, contributing to broader accountability and value creation (Mongelli, Rullani, Ramus, & Rimac, 2019).

To tap into these countervailing insights, we focus on understanding the identity tensions at both the institutional (macro-level) and individual levels (micro-level) that shape the hybrid nature of the organization and its actors. Accounting and accountability practices should not be simply considered practices that organizations – known as hybrid – may or may not develop due to contextual and cultural factors. Instead, these practices may be constitutive for hybrid organizations, a means of aligning conflicting logics and objectives from the outset, at both the organizational and individual levels. Such alignment, in turn, may favor greater reliance on accounting and accountability practices. These issues are particularly relevant in the complex domain of academic spin-offs, more accurately described as hybrid knowledge-intensive organizations. Academic spin-offs feature high education rates; intangible resources; complex, ambiguous processes; wide employee autonomy, self-determination, creativity and intrinsic work motivation; and highly difficult performance evaluation (e.g., Kärreman, Sveningsson, & Alvesson, 2002). In this context, hybridity refers to the existence of several conflicting logics and identities tackling the organizational and individual levels (Crow, Whitman, & Anderson, 2020) and likely to threaten systematic broad value creation. Therefore, understanding how the multiplicity of values and related identities (academic and entrepreneurial) develops into hybridity at both the individual and organizational levels, rather than into the prevalence of several logics over others, becomes paramount. In this paper, we focus on accounting and accountability's potential to negotiate the hybridization of conflicting logics and identities, which, in turn, might foster greater commitment to such logics and practices. The aim is to understand how accounting and accountability practices can be constitutive of hybrid academic entrepreneurial logics and identities, which in turn favor the development of accounting and accountability practices. The research employs a theoretically informed in-depth single case study of the academic spin-off MegaRide of the University of Naples Federico II (Italy).

The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. The second section reviews extant research. The third and fourth sections develop the theoretical model and describe the research design and context, respectively. The fifth and sixth sections present the findings of the case study, while the seventh discusses the results. Lastly, we advance some concluding remarks.