The hybrid organizations’ contribution to the sustainability transition of actors in the german food industry

Abstract

In recent years, concerns about climate change have increased and the urgency to act on them and respect the planet's boundaries is inevitable. With the United Nation’s commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals, pressure on various sectors, including the food industry has increased, calling upon a divergent change.Looking at the German food industry, this thesis aims at understanding and outlining how hybrid organisations operating in the German food industry can initiate such divergent, transform the latter into a less wasteful one, despite facing a variety of barriers and challenges.Drawing on the institutional entrepreneurship (IE) theory and applying its framework onto a qualitative multiple case study, this thesis reveals that hybrid organizations do engage in vision creation, ally mobilization and resources mobilization, consequently characterising them as institutional entrepreneurs on a meso-level perspective. Yet this research further shows that the role hybrids inhabit and the magnitude of their transformative power is limited by a variety of barriers and challenges, that arise from their and other actor's institutional embeddedness as well as due to the nature and complexity of the industry itself.

Date of Award	5 Jul 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Laure Leglise (Supervisor)