Abstract

This exploratory study investigates how managers of five China’s bike-sharing program (PBS) operators understand the mission(s) of their organizations, how they perceive legitimacy, and how they seek to overcome organization challenges. More specifically, the study focus on two research questions: (1) How do PBS operation organizations understand themselves? (2) What are PBS’ organizational strategies towards multiple demands? Recently, the public and academia have raised concerns about PBS programs’ impact (Waldmeir, 2014; Alcoba, 2012). PBS operators also report operation challenge such as legitimacy issues and business model sustainability. The study adopts the “institutional logics perspective” (Thornton, Ocasio & Lounsbury, 2012) and analyzes the institutional logics suggested from several organizational aspects to understand PBS’s organizational nature and strategy. It also compares the differences among the five organizations. The results offer a detailed description of the institutional logics of these operators, as well as some suggestions on PBS management and future institutional studies.
This study helped encourage actors from different areas of the society understand the PBS organizations’ nature and strategy, as well as to encourage more studies on hybrid organizations that face conflicting logics and make public projects more sustainable and beneficial to the general public.