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We have been working together for more than 40 years with some success. In this chapter, we use that lengthy collaboration to suggest what elements and processes have been important for us, and, which we believe are important for working together more generally. These include: the local environment for collaborative research; the dynamics of an ongoing collaboration; the process of managing collaboration; the impact of personal styles; the changing nature of collaboration the longer it continues; the impact of career changes; and the role of successful outcomes. We examine what lessons we have learned and make some observations about our experience in relation to more general ideas about collaboration.

The research aim of this chapter is to understand how different institutional logics affect the day-to-day activities of healthcare providers and whether the cohabitation of professional logics with business-like logics increases medical providers’ effectiveness and gives chance to constrain healthcare costs. This research is based on longitudinal case study about the restructuring of the Canadian healthcare system in Alberta in 1992–2008, described in two papers (Reay & Hinings, 2005, 2009). We identify the situation after encroachment of a new, business-like logic into a healthcare system as more complex than described in the extant literature. We challenge the findings of the case study authors that there are two cohabitating logics in healthcare: the business-like logic supported by the government and the logic of medical professionalism. From our research it appears that there are two other logics: a managerial logic derived from business-like logic, and a hybrid professional logic that is a modification of the logic of medical professionalism. Across the healthcare field in general, business-like logic has been competing with the logic of medical professionalism, but on the medical providers’ level these logics become uncoupled. Within a medical provider, on the external, symbolic layer, physicians follow their professional logic and managers show conformity with governmental principles. But on the backstage layer, where the day-to-day work is actually performed, these two logics are subject to modification, creating a space for compromise and cooperation, leading to a growth of the number of unnecessary medical services preventing cost containments in healthcare.

To consider Critical Management Studies as a social movement.

The purpose is fulfilled by reflecting upon the history of Critical Management Studies by reference to social movement theory, institutional theory and the social theory of hegemony.

Critical Management Studies is plausibly understood as a social movement.

The chapter offers a fresh perspective on Critical Management Studies by representing it as a movement rather than as a specialist field of knowledge.

This double volume presents a collection of 23 papers on how institutions matter to socio-economic life. The papers delve deeply into the practical impact an institutional approach enables, as well as how such research has the potential to influence policies relevant to critical institutional changes unfolding in the world today. In Volume 48A, the focus is on the micro foundations of institutional impacts. In Volume 48B, the focus is on the macro consequences of institutional arrangements. Our introduction provides an overview to the two volumes, identifies points of contact between the papers, and briefly summarizes each contribution. We close by noting avenues for future research on how institutions matter. Overall, the volumes provide a cross-section of cutting edge institutional thought and empirical research, highlighting a variety of fruitful directions for knowledge accumulation and development.

Philip Selznick has been a central, historical figure in the development of institutional theory. In particular his contribution in TVA and the Grass Roots and Leadership in Administration has been key. However, we put forward the relevance of Selznick’s broader portfolio of ideas, to show that they could inform institutional analysis in new ways. There are important ideas and insights that can be brought to bear on contemporary issues within institutional theory. In particular, Selznick was concerned with the ways in which organizational goals are deflected because of different interest groups. Organizations use various kinds of cooptation to deal with interest groups. Selznick’s perspective implies that institutional theorists need to be concerned with both deflection of purposes and interests. These ideas are explored further in his work, The Organizational Weapon, showing a concern with the nefarious effects of organizational practices, an avenue that institutional theory needs to explore further. Indeed, Selznick was always concerned with the consequences of institutionalization. He dealt with issues of organizational governance, purposes and interests, ideas of unanticipated as well as anticipated consequences, negative as well as positive effects of institutionalization all of which require further analysis in contemporary institutional theory. Also at the heart of Selznick’s work was an emphasis on policy and practice, coming from American pragmatist philosophy. For Selznick, knowledge is to be utilized to produce good policy and practice. Institutional theorists need to consider the applications of their knowledge.

This article reviews the historical development of the treatment of religious organizations in journals centered on religion.

The article asks four questions: (1) Are religious organizations different from other kinds of organizations? (2) What factors produce differences or similarities between religious and other organizations? (3) Are religious organizations different from each other?

Differences from other kinds of organizations are based in beliefs/theology. But there is a constant concern with the bureaucratization of religious organizations as they are subject to general organizational influences such as scale and geographical dispersion. However, it is argued that these general influences emanate from belief systems. We suggest the need for a renewed attention to a comparative organizations perspective in organization theory – one that appreciates the similarities and differences between sectors and within sectors.

Not only are there differences between religious and nonreligious organizations, but there are also substantial differences between religious organizations. There are also similarities between religious and nonreligious organizations, as well as similarities between religious organizations. The way forward for both the study of religious organizations and organizational theory in general is to look for explanations for these similarities and differences.

Field emergence poses an intriguing problem for institutional theorists. New issue fields often arise at the intersection of different sectors, amidst extant structures of meanings and actors. Such nascent fields are fragmented and lack clear guides for action; making it unclear how they ever coalesce. The authors propose that provisional social structures provide actors with macrosocial presuppositions that shape ongoing field-configuration; bootstrapping the field. The authors explore this empirically in the context of social impact investing in the UK, 2000–2013, a period in which this field moved from clear fragmentation to relative alignment. The authors combine different computational text analysis methods, and data from an extensive field-level study, to uncover meaningful patterns of interaction and structuration. Our results show that across various periods, different types of actors were linked together in discourse through “actor–meaning couplets.” These emergent couplings of actors and meanings provided actors with social cues, or macrofoundations, which guided their local activities. The authors thus theorize a recursive, co-constitutive process: as punctuated moments of interaction generate provisional structures of actor–meaning couplets, which then cue actors as they navigate and constitute the emerging field. Our model re-energizes the core tenets of new structuralism and contributes to current debates about institutional emergence and change.

In this chapter the authors focus on the role of power associated with microfoundations of organizational hybridity. They develop a framework that illuminates how key sources of power based on Buchanan and Badham (2008) and French and Raven (1959) manifest at the level of everyday work practices. Using this framework, they draw on existing studies concerning hybridity in professional organizations to illustrate how different forms of power come into play when actors guided by different logics engage in day-to-day professional work. Overall, the authors suggest that more attention to how micro-level actors use different forms of power to support, hamper, or alter different mechanisms to manage tensions among competing logics in everyday work is critical to improving our understanding about the microfoundations of institutionalism.

The purpose of this paper is to (a) distinguish the structural designs, and (b) examine the relationship between structure and effectiveness in American sport organizations. Formalization, centralization, and specialization were examined to determine the structural designs. Senior level administrators from National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I (N = 86) departments completed an electronic questionnaire. Cluster analysis was used to group departments according to the three dimensions of structure. Results demonstrated the presence of two structural designs—the Simple Structure and the Enabling Structure. MANCOVA procedures showed differences between departments in athletic achievement, but not in the education of student athletes. Discussion of the findings and future directions are presented.

The core goal of the “micro-foundational” agenda appears to be less an institutionalism founded in the micro, or reduced to the micro, and more some form of integrative institutionalism: that is, an institutionalism that does justice to the perpetual, co-constitutive interplay of local activities (the micro) and trans-local patterns (the macro). In this chapter, thus, the authors argue for a conscious, explicit embrace of integrative institutionalism; and of the broader agenda that this terminology opens up. Based on this overdue rewording the authors highlight additional problems and possibilities – providing a constructive reformulation and elaboration of the “micro-foundational” agenda as it currently stands.