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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how fairness evaluations are constructed in a B2B context.

This paper conducts a field study of Air Greenland and its internal and external customers based on strong structuration theory (Stones, 2005). The authors employ context and conduct analysis to analyze how fairness evaluations emerge across four levels of structuration.

The paper finds that fairness evaluations emerge as a result of the interaction between external institutional pressures, agents' internal structures, and situated reflection and outcomes. The construction of fairness evaluations was embedded in contradictory institutional structures, where groups of actors constructed different evaluations of fair profits, procedures and prices. Actors furthermore worked on changing position-practice relations which shifted relations, external structures and affected outcomes and fairness evaluations.

This paper offers a conceptualization of embedded agency as emerging across the four levels of structuration. This contributes to debates in strong structuration theory through conceptualizing and analyzing how actors may be both be constrained and oriented by structures while reflexively adapting structures across the four levels of structuration. The paper extends extant pricing fairness research by illustrating how actors' construction of fairness flexibly develop fairness evaluations while responding to legitimacy and societal demands, including the needs of particular customer groups.

Welfare reforms introduced conditionality into cash transfers often by diverse welfare-to-work programs achieving its vast legitimization. Meanwhile in-kind poverty alleviation policies maintained their universal character in the forms of national budgeting of municipal services. Utilizing justification work, the authors aim at showing how conditionality of in-kind support is replacing universalism. The authors ask which justification work assist administrators in shaping the relationship between in-kind and cash transfer and the changing meanings of poverty alleviation practices.

The authors conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with senior administrators in Israeli local governments analysing them along principles of critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2010). Further, seeking to elicit the justification work, the authors added some guidelines from the discourse interaction approach.

The findings identified administrators' justification work as taking two major shapes. The first is an emphasis on conditionality in their in-kind support projects, which is limited in time, contingent upon co-operation and sometimes even enhancing choice for those in need. The second is the manifestation of pride anchored in the skilful budget management enabling the achievement of conditional in-kind support projects based on the effort involved.

The authors did not prompt the interviewees for the proportions of specific categories, such as whether they are attending and benefitting of the in-kind support programs. This is a limitation of this study that prevented the authors from contrasting perceived achievements against the actual coverage of their projects.

It is important that government funding is increased for municipal anti-poverty policies engaging municipal administrator in the struggle for full and better coverage so that capability deprivation is combatted by a combination of cash transfer and quality social services that are universal and at the same time secure mentoring and supervision to all households in need.

Future research should present the analysis that associates different budgets of each city with its anti-poverty polices and its different socio-economic ranking. Critical social-policy scholars may apply this study’s findings in future analyses of municipal administrators' power position as reinforced by national level policy makers, particularly when introducing controversial policies.

Anti-poverty policy and the specific combination between conditional cash transfers and in-kind support have been explained at the level of political–economic decision making. The authors conceptualize the need to explain anti-poverty policy by focussing on municipal administrators’ embedded agency, particularly around controversial issues. By building the professional self of municipal welfare administrators, inter alia by ignoring past meanings of in-kind support as depriving recipients of autonomy, conditionality is extended into in-kind services.

Life science innovation is a complex domain of professional work including scientific know-how, regulatory expertise, and commercialization and marketing skills. While the investment in basic life science research has soared over the last decades, resulting in a substantial growth in scientific know-how, the life science industry (and most notably pharmaceutical companies) unfortunately reports a meagre innovative output. In order to counteract waning innovation productivity, new organizational initiatives seek to better bridge and bond existing life science resources. The purpose of this paper is to report a case study of bio venture hub initiative located in a major multinational pharmaceutical company.

Drawing on institutional work literature, an empirical study based on case study methodology demonstrates that new life science collaborations demand both external and internal institutional work to challenge conventional wisdom, making the legal protection of intellectual properties a key factor in the field and that in turn complicates much firm collaborations. Such institutional work questions existing practices and opens up new pathways in life science innovation work.

The bio hub initiative, which in considerable ways breaks with the traditional in-house and new drug development activities located in enclosed R&D departments and in collaboration with clinical research organizations, demands extensive institutional work and political savoir-faire to create legitimacy and operational stability. Not only are there practical, legal, and regulatory issues to handle, but the long-term legitimacy and financial stability of the bio hub initiative demands support from both internal and external significant actors and stakeholders. The external institutional work in turn demands a set of skills in the bio venture hub’s management team, including detailed scientific and regulatory expertise, communicative skills, and the charisma and story-telling capacities to convince and win over sceptics. The internal institutional work, in turn, demands an understanding of extant legal frameworks and fiscal policies, the ability to handle a series of practical and administrative routines (i.e. how to procure the chemicals used in the laboratory work or how to make substance libraries available), and to serve as a “match-maker” between the bio venture hub companies and the experts located at the hosting company.

The case study provides first-hand empirical data from an unique initiative in the pharmaceutical industry to create novel collaborative spaces where small-sized life science companies can take advantage of the mature firm’s expertise and stock of know-how, also benefitting the hosting company as new collaborations unfold and providing a detailed understanding of ongoing life science innovation projects. In this view, all agencies embedded in institutional field (i.e. what has been addressed as “institutional work” – the active work to create, maintain, or disrupt institutions) both to some extent destabilize existing practise and create new practices better aligned with new conditions and relations between relevant and mutually dependent organizations. The empirical study supports the need for incorporating the concept of agency in institutional theory and thus contributes to the literature on institutional work by showing how one of the industries, the pharmaceutical industry, being strongly fortified by intellectual property rights (i.e. a variety of patents), inhibiting the free sharing of scientific and regulatory know-how and expertise, is in fact now being in the process of rethinking the “closed-doors” tradition of the industry. That is, the institutional work conducted in the bio venture hub is indicative of new ideas entering Big Pharma.

This study seeks to provide an examination of a health policy network operating in a single, small community along the US‐Mexican border. The purpose of the paper is to discuss why and how this network evolved, and then to present findings on how the network was structured. Analysis will focus especially on agency involvement, or “embeddedness” in the network, and its relationship to attitudes held by network members regarding trust, reputation, and perceived benefit.

Data were collected from 15 public and nonprofit agencies trying to work collaboratively to influence local policy and services regarding the prevention of obesity‐related chronic disease, especially diabetes. Embeddedness was measured in three different ways and both confirmed and unconfirmed networks were assessed. Network analysis methods were utilized as well as nonparametric correlation statistics.

The network was found to be densely connected through unconfirmed linkages, but much less so when these links were confirmed. Strongest findings were found for shared information. Measures of agency embeddedness in the network were strong predictors of agency reputation, but findings for trust and perceived benefit were generally weak.

From a practice perspective, the study points to the problems in building and sustaining community‐based chronic disease health networks, especially in a small community with substantial health needs. The research also contributes to theory on embeddedness and to methodology for collecting and analyzing data on community health networks.

This paper aims to offer an incremental contribution, augmenting the notion of situated rationality as proposed by terBogt and Scapens (2019). Through insights from empirical data, the authors explore the role of situated rationalities of key individual actors in processes of management control change.

A qualitative research approach was adopted with qualitative data collected in a single public service organisation through face-to-face interviews, organisation documentation and observations.

The findings present the important role of key individual actors in bringing about a new situated rationality in a housing department. External austerity forces combined with actors’ experience rationalities acted as a stimulus to change existing management control practices in the management of public services.

The paper conceptualises “experience” rationality, capturing the experiences of a key actor, including elements of leadership style. Drawing on a story of a complex process of management control change, this paper thus reveals interactions between generalised practices and situated rationalities which were not highlighted by the extended framework of terBogt and Scapens.

Research was conducted to investigate whether, and how, political accountability might stabilise when agents are faced with profound changes in external structures such as competition laws and austerity policies.

We performed a field study from 2007 to 2015 in a regional hub in Finland and worked with data from document analysis, interviews and meeting observations. We have used embedded research design, where we apply methodological bracketing as well as composite sequence analysis for field research.

Accountability declined when irresistible external structures were the dominant influence on the unreflective actions of agents-in-focus. With time, however, the agents started acting critically by drawing on structures that could facilitate strategic actions to stabilise political accountability.

The field research and interpretation of the data were limited to the organisation analysed; however, the theoretical arguments allow for analytical generalisations.

The research demonstrates how public officials and political decision-makers can eventually adopt a strategic approach when faced with irresistible change in external structures.

The research demonstrates how public officials and political decision-makers can eventually adopt a strategic approach when faced with irresistible changes in external structures.

The study locates political accountability in the context of strong structuration theory and discusses how it is redefined by external structures.

This study aims to investigate how actors’ responses to competing logics (academic and business logics) in budgetary practices in a university setting in Tanzania were shaped by state pressure, market pressure and organizational characteristics (funding certainty and changes in university ownership) and how actors’ agency was exercised in enacting competing logics.

The data for this study were collected from interviews, observations, informal discussions and document review. The data analysis processes were guided by institutional logic concepts and the role of actors’ agency.

The findings demonstrate how academic logic traditionally subsisted in a university setting in which there was funding certainty. Changes in the university’s ownership resulted in funding uncertainty. Market and state pressure increased the intensity of funding uncertainty, which supported business logic. While market logic supported the emergence of business logic, state pressure altered the balance of the competing logics. University actors responded by selective coupling and compartmentalizing where both elements of academic and business logics were enacted. While managers prioritized business logic, academics prioritized academic logic. However, the role of agency was exercised in actors’ responses, subverting both academic and business logics.

Managers should appropriately enact both elements of competing logics to avoid marginalization of some of the core university activities. In addition, profitable business ideas should be considered, identified, planned and implemented successfully. Moreover, there is a need to change the historically contingent and culturally situated environment when enacting competing logics. Furthermore, the state influence on universities should be considered to prevent unnecessary uncertainties in budgetary practices.

The paper demonstrates how selective coupling and compartmentalizing strategies were used by actors to enact both elements of competing logics in budgetary practices in a university setting. It further shows how actors’ agency influenced and subverted competing logics. The paper, thus, responds to the recent calls to investigate the influence of institutional logics on control practices, and the role of actors in strategically handling different logics in developing countries (Damayanthi and Gooneratne, 2017; Argento et al., 2020; Anessi-Pessina et al., 2016; Grossi et al., 2020). It further suggests new analysis of academic and business logics in their context.

The purpose of this paper is examine whether agency conflicts between controlling and minority shareholders affect firms' decisions to purchase non‐audit services (NAS). The author examines whether client firms engage separate firms for audit and non‐audit functions, especially if the expected agency costs are high.

The sample consists of 772 firm‐year observations from Sweden where the ownership patterns are highly concentrated. The hypotheses are tested using multivariate regression analyses.

Empirical findings reveal that higher levels of agency cost proxies are significantly negatively related to both absolute and relative non‐audit fees but, at the same time, are significantly positively related to the level of outside consulting services purchased from non‐incumbent auditors. Together, these findings support the view that client firms are protecting the appearance of their auditor's independence.

One cannot rule out the possibility that there are some unspecified factors unrelated to auditor independence issues that affect both client firms' purchases of NAS and the level of outside consulting services purchased from non‐incumbent auditors.

The research findings have implications for the functioning of the audit and NAS markets. The increasing pressure on companies to improve the perception of their auditor independence by engaging separate auditors and consultants further limits the auditor choice decision.

This is the first paper that investigates whether agency conflicts between majority and minority shareholders affect firms' decisions to purchase NAS. This is also the first paper to examine determinants of purchases of NAS from non‐incumbent audit firms.

This paper explores how management controls of a clustered apparel firm in Sri Lanka (Stitch-It) is shaped by institutional field and societal logics, firm's head office prescriptions, clusters' own attributes and strategic behavior of cluster managers.

It follows the research philosophy of interpretivism and embedded case study approach within the qualitative research design, while institutional complexity within the institutional logics perspective and paradoxical tensions, organizational attributes and strategic responses to institutional processes provide the theoretical underpinning.

The findings suggest that market, profession and state logics in the apparel field, alongside community logic at the societal level, develop a state of complexity in Stitch-It and its clusters. At the cluster level, such complexity is further intensified by head office guidelines (on controls), which gets filtered by the organizational attributes of the particular clusters. At this state, paradoxical tensions are developed within clusters, and to mitigate such tensions, key organizational members employ different strategies, which in turn shape management controls of the clusters.

This paper highlights that practicing managers need to be mindful of different logics in the field, organizational attributes, resulting tensions, complexities, strategies to deal with them and their ramifications on controls.

The paper asserts that management controls is a dynamic and a situational phenomenon, which continuously evolves in light of organizational attributes, multiple logics and head office prescriptions. It conceptualizes the “tensions” evident in the design and implementation of management controls, arising due to multiplicity of pressures as “paradoxical tensions.” Although important and relevant to management control arena, “paradoxical tensions” has been scantly explored by prior researchers.

Agency involves dynamic socio-cultural processes that facilitate development. This paper is written in three parts. In Part 1, there are two purposes, the first purpose is to intimately connect agency and institutional theory, and the second purpose is to explore the relationship between agency development and growth and globalisation. In Part 2, the purpose will be to explore development with respect to the political context by explaining in terms of culture under what conditions political groups may come to power. Using political frames intended to define their nature and realities, political groups seek to attract agents in their political sphere to gain administrative power. In Part 3, the purpose will be to model, using cybernetic agency theory, the nature of development and its reduction to instrumentality.

In this part of the three-part paper, development theory is explained as a multidisciplinary field in which research and theories are clustered together and set within an adaptive institutional activity system framework. An adaptive activity system has a plural membership of agents represented by agency. Agency represents an activity system that will be argued to operate through its institutional metasystem. This enables activity system development to be explained as a process of institutional evolution. In Part 1, the problem will be addressed of how the relationship between agency and institution enables institutional change. To resolve this agency will be shown to be institutional in nature, and agency development as a process of institutional evolution. To distinguish between development and growth/globalisation, agency will be taken to have an internal and external context. Distinction will then be made between development as an internal attribute of agency and its consequences, which may include the external attributes of growth/globalisation. It will also be explained that development may have a less desirable condition when it becomes liquid.

The three-part paper develops a political development theory that identifies the conditions under which formal political groups are able to promote frames of policy to attract support from autonomous agents that constitute the membership of the activity system, and hence gain agency status. Furthermore, Bauman’s theory of liquid modernity is connected to Sorokin’s theory of socio-cultural dynamics and cultural stability. One result is the notion of liquid development, an unstable condition of development in adaptive activity systems.

The implication of this research is that, given additional appropriate measurement criteria, it will allow conceptual and empirical methods to be used that will potentially enable political outcomes in complex socio-political environments to be anticipated.

The implication of this research is that it will allow empirical methods to be used that potentially enables political outcomes in complex socio-political environments to be anticipated, given additional appropriate measurement criteria.

The synergy of agency and institutional theories to explain the process of development is new, as well as its application to the political development process in a political landscape. As part of this synergistic process, Bauman’s concept of liquidity is shown to relate to Sorokin’s ideas of socio-cultural change.