Managing Hybrid Work Arrangements: Implications for Management Practice

Abstract

The study focuses on municipal organizations' transformation of control mechanisms to manage hybrid work arrangements. Utilising organizational control theory from Kärreman and Alvesson (2004) and Ouchi (1979, 1980), the research explores how technocratic controls and socio-ideological controls operate simultaneously in hybrid work arrangements. Based on semi-structured interviews with 13 managers and directors from three Swedish municipalities, along with examination of organizational hybrid work documents, the findings indicate that successful coordination depends on intentional integration of diverse control mechanisms. While municipalities sustain technocratic controls via formal policies and results-oriented performance metrics, they simultaneously employ socio-ideological controls through trust-based governance, organizational culture development, and references to common values. The findings demonstrate a central paradox: the conditions necessitating clan control—increased uncertainty and reduced behavioural visibility—simultaneously undermine the informal interactions through which clan control develops. Organizations attempt to resolve this by formalising previously spontaneous mechanisms through structured digital social activities and mandatory office days, though participants reported these inadequately substitute for organic workplace interactions. The study contributes to organizational control theory by showing how controls function interdependently in hybrid contexts. Rather than escaping control through autonomy, employees experience restructured control operating through internalized norms and peer expectations. The findings show how expectations for ongoing accessibility and involvement produce understated but possibly limiting normative pressures, suggesting that organizations must strike a balance between hybrid work's flexibility advantages and acknowledging the influential social-ideological controls that shape how employees view themselves in hybrid work environments.