“They’re Alive!”: Exploring the Intentionality of Institutional Logics, their Variable Orientation Toward Jurisdictional Expansion, and the General Significance of their Internal Dynamics
On Practice and Institution: Theorizing the Interface
ISBN: 978-1-80043-413-4, eISBN: 978-1-80043-412-7
Publication date: 12 January 2021
Abstract
This paper is based on a presentation at a conference in 2019, which called on participants to explore the merits of more practice-theoretical conceptualizations of institutions and institutional logics. The main body of the paper is a lightly edited version of the presentation, which explores three interwoven topics: First, why an avowedly practice-theoretic institutionalism might be analytically fertile; second, what horizons might be generated for institutional logicians by an intensified embrace of practice theory; and third, what these analytic potentialities might entail for the “peopling” of institutional theory. The tone and purpose of the paper are exploratory; though provisional conclusions are elaborated in an analytic epilogue. Purposefully provocative claims include that institutional logics may possess some form of intentionality, or a distinctive orientation toward the world, and that such orientations may differentially encourage jurisdictional expansion.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Mike Lounsbury for inviting me to put together some thoughts for the Alberta conference on practice-driven institutionalism – without this impetus, the paper would never have taken form. I would also like to express my gratitude for the patience, engagement, and enthusiasm of various participants in the program, without which the paper would likely have found itself relegated to a drawer for all eternity (or at least until it decomposed). I would also like to thank Mike for his editorial guidance – and especially for the leeway he permitted for a somewhat non-traditional paper. Last, but not least, I very much appreciate the work of my anonymous reviewer – whose comments and responses were extremely useful in refining the paper.
Citation
Steele, C.W.J. (2021), "“They’re Alive!”: Exploring the Intentionality of Institutional Logics, their Variable Orientation Toward Jurisdictional Expansion, and the General Significance of their Internal Dynamics", Lounsbury, M., Anderson, D.A. and Spee, P. (Ed.) On Practice and Institution: Theorizing the Interface (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 70), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 209-223. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20200000070007
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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