Transaction Cost Perspectives on Cooperation: A Study of Hybrids Through Foundations Lobbying in the EU

This article uses a transaction cost economics (TCE) approach to analyze cooperation between nonprofits, governments and firms, namely, hybrids. This is a different concept from hybrids in the nonprofit management literature. In TCE, hybrids are organizational modes of transactions where the parties contribute limited resources, for which they establish modes of coordination. This article explains how the concept of hybrids can be applied to research on nonprofits, illustrating this with an analysis of foundations lobbying in the European Union (EU). As regulatory transactions are organized through hybrids, this article proposes that foundations are likely to participate in EU policymaking for regulatory transactions, which are too costly to solve individually. The results show that foundations participate in different EU regulatory environments; significantly, this includes environments with high coordination costs.