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Conflicting institutional logics are thought to be factors that hinder organizational changes in public institutions. Thus, this study explores the different strategies of public sector organizations to handle tensions from conflicting institutional logics in their day-to-day activities.

The authors argue that strategies for handling conflicting logics should not be treated separately. Rather, the authors show that within organizations, different strategies could be interconnected and depend on each other. The empirical insights come from a case study of a large German federal authority, in which management reporting was introduced with the intent to effect change in the organization.

The authors show how, over time, organization members confront the practice of management reporting with different approaches to address conflicting institutional demands and to find ways to create management reports that would be accepted by different addressees.

The study documents three states of responds to conflicting institutional logics: decoupling, compromising and hybridization. The authors highlight the power dynamics between the corresponding actors and the consequences for using management reports in these different states. Accordingly, the authors aim to provide profound insights into the microdynamics in the context of conflicting institutional logics.

This study aims to understand how reporting practices act as drivers of change in situations of conflicting institutional logics in a public sector organisation.

The findings are based on a case study of a German federal authority, where management accounting reports were introduced as part of a “new” managerial logic of control.

In the case organisation, management accounting reports were intended to change the behaviour of executives but were still guided by an “old” logic of justification. Nevertheless, over time, the addressees of the reports used the reports and reconciled different logics. This documents a process from decoupling to compromising and, finally, reconciling different institutional logics.

By examining the practices of management accounting reporting, this study elaborates the tensions placed on individuals by conflicting institutional logics and provides insights into how organisational practices are used to handle and reconcile conflicting logics in a public sector organisation. Therefore, this paper contributes to the discussion on how organisational practices act as drivers of organisational change.