Strange Brew: Bridging Logics Via Institutional Bricolage and the Reconstitution of Organizational Identity

Abstract

How do organizations manage multiple logics in response to institutional complexity? In this paper, we explore how intraorganizational problems related to multiple logics may be addressed via the mechanism of institutional bricolage – where actors inside an organization act as “bricoleurs” to creatively combine elements from different logics into newly designed artifacts. An illustrative case study of a global brewery group’s development of such an artifact – a Responsible Drinking Guide Book – is outlined. We argue that intraorganizational institutional bricolage first requires the problematization of organizational identity followed by a social process involving efforts to renegotiate the organization’s identity in relation to the logics being integrated. We show that in response to growing pressures to be more “responsible,” a group of organizational actors creatively tinkered with and combined elements from social responsibility and market logics by drawing upon extant organizational resources from different times and spaces in an effort to reconstitute their collective organizational identity.

Citation

Højgaard Christiansen, L. and Lounsbury, M. (2013), "Strange Brew: Bridging Logics Via Institutional Bricolage and the Reconstitution of Organizational Identity", Lounsbury, M. and Boxenbaum, E. (Ed.) Institutional Logics in Action, Part B (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 39 Part B), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 199-232. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X(2013)0039AB020