Sector blurring: A systems-theoretical perspective

Vladislav Valentinov and Gabriela Daniel

EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2025, vol. 36, issue 4, No 44005, 14 pages

Abstract: Why are the public, private, and nonprofit sectors increasingly difficult to distinguish? This paper offers a new systems theory-based explanation. We argue that organizations today must respond simultaneously to demands from multiple function systems—legal, economic, political, scientific, and more. This creates internal pressure to accommodate competing expectations. As organizations adapt by integrating these demands into their structures and practices, traditional sector labels lose their descriptive value. We introduce a process model that explains this transformation in three stages: rising functional turbulence, multifunctional restructuring, and the erosion of established sectoral categories. This perspective moves beyond conventional accounts of sector blurring that focus on resource dependence and institutional logics. Instead, it shows how deeper shifts in today’s functionally differentiated society are reshaping how organizations function, how they are evaluated, and how they are classified—with far-reaching implications for governance, legitimacy, and the future of organizational identity.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility; functional differentiation; multifunctionality; nonprofit studies; sector blurring (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D23 L14 M31 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/336446/1/V ... _sector_blurring.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:espost:336446

DOI: 10.31083/MRev44005

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().