When financially oriented PMS support hybridity: The case of a cooperative bank

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This paper relates to the understanding of hybrid organizations and their use of PMS. More particularly, we explore how PMS support the collective sense-making. We rely on the case study of three regional cooperative banks belonging to a same banking group. Our findings show that PMS, even if relying on financial and productivity performance measures (linked to the commercial and banking values), are a real tool supporting the cooperative values. Findings especially highlight the importance of two features directly related to the use of PMS: (1) the role of the “logic model” underlying PMS and supporting sense-making; and (2) the strong role of managers in giving sense to the PMS, the cause-and-effect relationships between financial and social values underlying these systems and the performance evaluation process. This research contributes to the literature on incompleteness of PMS in the context of hybrid organizations highlighting the importance to closely link the PMS and the multiple values underlying causal relationships, allowing the sense-making process of hybridity, as well as the importance of the managerial sense-giving process. It also extends existing research on sense-making by considering PMS as artifacts supporting collective sense-making.