Abstract:
While research has identified a variety of hybrid governance structures, it has described and
sought to explain this variety from different theoretical perspectives that are not readily reconcilable.
This limits our ability systematically to compare different types of hybrids and on this basis
to further theoretical understanding. Results of an empirical survey of transactions in buyersupplier
relations in the German construction industry provide novel insights into three distinct,
widely employed types of hybrid governance structures. The study systematically compares the
found hybrid governance structures and explores their rationales. As its main theoretical contribution,
this study suggests that embeddedness and transaction cost arguments complement one another
in explaining different and previously theoretically unspecified types of hybrid governance
structures.
