Governance networks are emerging as a prominent feature of contemporary public administration where different actors are in a position to exert power on public organizations exposing them to conflicting demands. Moreover, public organizations are exposed to contradictory institutional pressures as they try to attend to numerous and sometimes-conflicting prescriptions from different reform models. Whilst, the presence of contradictory institutional logics is well recognized, how organizations cope with the challenge of contradictory institutional logics remains under researched. A largely prevailing argument is that organizations indecisively conform to institutional pressures where new logic replaces the prior one. This argument provides an over simplified explanation of this complex phenomenon because organizations may use diverse strategies (and at-times hybrid responses) to incorporate multiple logics at the same time. Responding to this literature gap, this study addresses how public organizations experience and manage institutional complexity in the contemporary network arrangements in the public sector. This study uses a multi-level framework for analyzing institutional complexity incorporating macro-level sectoral reforms that present contradictory logics to organizations; the meso-level network characteristics that shape the complexity for the embedded organizations; and micro-level organizational attributes that enable them to handle complexity by choosing appropriate strategies. The study adopts an abductive research approach using case study research design taking Pakistan’s energy sector as the case; power network as the embedded unit (within the energy sector) for network analysis; and two public sector utilities (LESCO and IESCO) as embedded units within power network for organizational analysis. iii The study finds that diverse reform trajectories have exposed the energy sector to three competing institutional logics including traditional public administration (TPA) logic, new public management (NPM) logic and new public governance (NPG) logic, exposing the public organizations to institutional complexity. Additionally, under NPM-based fragmentation and NPG-based integration reforms, there is drastic shift in energy sector from vertically integrated bureaucracies to a web of autonomous organizations working in governance networks. Three notable characteristics of the power network are fragmentation, centralization and trust, which play a critical role in shaping the complexity for embedded organizations. The study finds that the embedded organizations (LESCO and IESCO) have incorporated multiple and conflicting institutional prescriptions through the strategies of differentiated hybridity (where diverse logics are addressed separately) and blended hybridity (where logics are blended for new solutions). In this regard, the critical attributes of organizations, that can enable them to better handle institutional complexity, include their task, leadership and governance structure. The study supports the argument of institutional logics perspective that the organizations actively incorporate multiple institutional pressures by developing hybrid solutions. This study contributes to existing literature by providing an explanation of how organizations respond varyingly to institutional pressures while choosing appropriate strategies. Moreover, it captures the emergence, structure and characteristics of governance networks in contemporary public administration in developing countries. It also delineates policy implications for the energy sector crises in Pakistan from a governance point of view.