In my study of hospital management after reforms in recent decades, the term hybrid management appeared. This term was not well defined and it was not clear what managerial issues or practices it covered. I therefore chose a qualitative approach to explore how management was institutionalized and interpreted in hospitals. A qualitative research approach has the necessary flexibility to study a complex phenomenon such as management. Another strength is the flexibility to adjust the research design as new opportunities arise. My original most similar case design where I intended to study management within a Norwegian context was therefore altered to a most different case design and included a comparison between a Norwegian case and a German case. The value of such a comparison is not only that it is well suited to increase knowledge on the theme in focus but also that taken-for-granted knowledge was exposed in the comparison. This was most useful in developing a theory on hybrid management
