Many organizations, including those that provide vital services such as hospitals and schools, are labelled by public management scholars as “hybrids”: organizations in which idealtypical elements are mixed, such as multiple cultures or logics. Hospitals, for instance, often face the pressure to comply with (incompatible) demands from the state, the market and from the medical profession. Research on hybrid organizations has been focused on how these organizations and the individuals within them cope with the incompatibilities between the different cultures or logics that characterize a hybrid. This dissertation takes a novel approach by also studying how meaningful a given culture or logic is to an individual or an organization – what is called ‘centrality’ - as a crucial factor in understanding the workings of hybrid organizations. By studying how Dutch secondary education organizations cope with multiple institutional logics – taken-for-granted social prescriptions that define goals and expectations – this research shows how conflict in hybrid organizations is shaped, not only by the incompatibility of certain logics within an organization, as has previously been assumed, but also by the centrality of different logics to individual members of the organization. Interestingly, individuals who do not act by a single logic, but who hold multiple logics highly central, are less prone to conflict, as they are accustomed to managing contradictions.
Lars obtained bachelor’s degrees in Human Geography, Planning and Environment (2018), Public Administration (2018), and Political Science (2019) at the Radboud University. Subsequently, he obtained master’s degrees in Political Science (2019) and Public Administration (2020) at Radboud University. In July 2020 he joined the department of Public Administration to begin work on his PhD. During his PhD Lars was involved with projects for the Dutch Education Council, two Dutch political parties, and the national magazine on Public Administration “Bestuurskunde. Lars’ work has been published in various international and Dutch peer-reviewed journals. In addition, he co-authored multiple opinion pieces for the national newspaper “Trouw”. In 2024 he joined the supervisory board of a Montessori educational organization for secondary education. Since October 2024 he has been working as a lecturer at the department of Public Administration at Radboud University.