Recombinant property is a form of organizational hedging in which actors respond to uncertainty by diversifying assets, redefining and recombining resources. It is an attempt to hold resources that can be justified by more than one legitimating principle. Property transformation in postsocialist Hungary involves the decentralized reorganization of assets and the centralized management of liabilities. Together they blur the boundaries of public and private, the boundaries of enterprises, and the boundedness of justificatory principles. Enterprise-level field research, data on the ownership structure of Hungary's 220 largest enterprises and banks, and an examination of the government's recent debt consolidation programs suggest the emergence of a distinctively East European capitalism that will differ as much from West European capitalisms as do contemporary East Asian variants. The article examines the recombinant logic of organizational innovation in the restructuring of property relations in Hungary. It asks, Are recombinant processes resulting in a new type of mixed economy as a distinctively East European capitalism? For more than 30 years, policy analysts in Eastern Europe debated the “correct mix of plan and market.” By the mid-1980s in Hungary, the debate had shifted to the correct mix of “public and private property” as the earlier sacrosanct status of collective property eroded with the growth of the second economy. The existence of parallel structures (however contradictory and fragmentary) in these informal and interfirm networks that “got the job done” means that the collapse of the formal structures of the socialist regime does not result in an institutional vacuum. Instead, we find the persistence of routines and practices, organizational forms and social ties, that can become assets, resources, and the basis for credible commitments and coordinated actions in the postsocialist period. Recombinant property is a form of organizational hedging, or portfolio management, in which actors respond to uncertainty in the organizational environment by diversifying their assets, redefining and recombining resources. It is an attempt to hold resources that can be justified or assessed by more than one standard of measure. The distinctive variant of organizational hedging that is recombinant property in Hungary is produced in two simultaneous processes: Parallel to the decentralized reorganization of assets is the centralized management of liabilities. On the one hand, decentralized reorganization produces the crisscrossing lines of interenterprise ownership networks; on the other, debt consolidation transforms private debt into public liability. Although these two dimensions are discussed separately, their simultaneity gives distinctive shape to Hungarian property. The clash of competing ordering principles produces organizational diversity that can form a basis for greater adaptability but, at the same time, creates acute problems of accountability. Data collected during an 11-month stay in Budapest in 1993–94 include field research in six Hungarian enterprises, compilation of a data set on the ownership structure of Hungary’s 200 largest corporations and top 25 banks, andRecombinant property is a form of organizational hedging in which actors respond to uncertainty by diversifying assets, redefining and recombining resources. It is an attempt to hold resources that can be justified by more than one legitimating principle. Property transformation in postsocialist Hungary involves the decentralized reorganization of assets and the centralized management of liabilities. Together they blur the boundaries of public and private, the boundaries of enterprises, and the boundedness of justificatory principles. Enterprise-level field research, data on the ownership structure of Hungary's 220 largest enterprises and banks, and an examination of the government's recent debt consolidation programs suggest the emergence of a distinctively East European capitalism that will differ as much from West European capitalisms as do contemporary East Asian variants. The article examines the recombinant logic of organizational innovation in the restructuring of property relations in Hungary. It asks, Are recombinant processes resulting in a new type of mixed economy as a distinctively East European capitalism? For more than 30 years, policy analysts in Eastern Europe debated the “correct mix of plan and market.” By the mid-1980s in Hungary, the debate had shifted to the correct mix of “public and private property” as the earlier sacrosanct status of collective property eroded with the growth of the second economy. The existence of parallel structures (however contradictory and fragmentary) in these informal and interfirm networks that “got the job done” means that the collapse of the formal structures of the socialist regime does not result in an institutional vacuum. Instead, we find the persistence of routines and practices, organizational forms and social ties, that can become assets, resources, and the basis for credible commitments and coordinated actions in the postsocialist period. Recombinant property is a form of organizational hedging, or portfolio management, in which actors respond to uncertainty in the organizational environment by diversifying their assets, redefining and recombining resources. It is an attempt to hold resources that can be justified or assessed by more than one standard of measure. The distinctive variant of organizational hedging that is recombinant property in Hungary is produced in two simultaneous processes: Parallel to the decentralized reorganization of assets is the centralized management of liabilities. On the one hand, decentralized reorganization produces the crisscrossing lines of interenterprise ownership networks; on the other, debt consolidation transforms private debt into public liability. Although these two dimensions are discussed separately, their simultaneity gives distinctive shape to Hungarian property. The clash of competing ordering principles produces organizational diversity that can form a basis for greater adaptability but, at the same time, creates acute problems of accountability. Data collected during an 11-month stay in Budapest in 1993–94 include field research in six Hungarian enterprises, compilation of a data set on the ownership structure of Hungary’s 200 largest corporations and top 25 banks, and