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Access to personal data is key to many of the most successful recent business models. These models rely on individuals outside of traditional organizational boundaries as their product, content providers, and customers. The topic of organizational boundaries is central to organizational research, and these models raise questions about the permeability of these new forms’ boundaries. Herein I elaborate on data-based business models, the organizational field that has emerged around data governance issues, and the institutions that have formed around it at different stages, by various actors. I also explore the interplay of institutional field and organizational boundaries, to identify how field-level issues influence the permeability of organizational boundaries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influences on the adoption of environmental management accounting (EMA) in corporatised water supply organisations, from an institutional theory perspective, drawing on the concepts of reflexive isomorphism and institutional logics.

The primary research involves case analysis of three companies in the Australian water supply industry, drawing on interviews, internal documents and publicly available documents, including annual reports.

Two key drivers for the adoption and emergence of EMA are: the emergence of a government regulator in the form of the Essential Services Commission (ESC) and community expectations with regard to environmental performance and disclosure. The water organisations were found to be reflexively isomorphic, while seeking to align their commercial logic to “sustainability” and “ensuring community expectations” logics to the legitimate adoption of EMA.

The paper contributes to the literature by providing case study evidence of the intentions and motivations of management in adopting EMA, and the nature of that adoption process over an extended period. Further, it provides empirical evidence of the applicability of reflexive isomorphism in the context of EMA and institutional logics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the interrelations between the evolution of industrial relations (IR) and IR research in Poland in the historical context. Two questions are put forward: How was the evolution of the IR system in Poland influenced by the re-constitution of a particular model of the capitalism and the strategies and struggle of IR actors? How were the ways of approaching and theorizing IR influenced by the aforementioned evolution?

The paper draws upon academic literature, secondary data on actors and processes of IR as well as four expert interviews with the representatives of the first generation of IR scholars in Poland.

The paper suggests that the development of the IR system and the related scholarship can be divided into three phases: the pre-1989 period characterised by the lack of autonomous interests representation and rather limited IR research; the early development of the post-1989 IR system marked by the debates on the integrative role of IR as peacekeeping mechanism in the period of deep economic and political changes (1989-2004); the post-EU accession consolidation of the IR system characterised by the weakness of the IR actors vis-à-vis the state and increasing neo-etatist tendencies.

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the relationships between the emergent models of Eastern European capitalism and the evolution of IR systems. It critically analyses the state of the discussion on the IR field Poland emphasising the relevance of political-economic factors as well as the ideology of “social peace” for both the evolution of the IR system in the country and the state of the IR debate.

The purpose of this study is to examine how multi-tier suppliers respond to the institutional pressures for the implementation of sustainable supply management (SSM) practices in supply chains, and what institutional logics allow them to do so.

This study employs a qualitative research design, drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with 46 owners and managers of multi-tier suppliers and 18 key informants of diverse stakeholders. Following an abductive approach, institutional theory conceptually guides the analytical iteration processes between theory and interview data.

The findings demonstrate two kinds of thematic responses to institutional pressures – coupling (good side) and decoupling (dark side) of the supply chain – used by the factory management of multi-tier suppliers. This paper also identifies multiple institutional logics – market-led logic, values-led logic and holistic sustainability logic – that are perceived to conflict (trade-offs) and complement (synergies) the SSM implementation.

By investigating the perspectives of the factory management of upstream apparel suppliers, this study enhances the understanding of the connection between (de)coupling responses and institutional logics inside the multi-tier supplier firms. Further research would be required to include more downstream tiers including the ultimate users.

The findings may be of particular attention to brand-owning apparel retailers, industry leaders and policymakers who are seeking to understand multi-tier suppliers' challenges, conflicts and (de)coupling responses, and become aware of how they can be dealt with.

This study contributes to and expands the embryonic research stream of sustainable multi-tier supply chain management by connecting it to the wider application of institutional theory.

Institutional work mainly focused on the purposive action of rational actors. However, the evolution of institution is not only affected by deliberate actions but also by emergent strategic patterns. Through a qualitative study of emergent aggression strategy in a Chinese leading private firm, Gome, this paper aims to explore the role of emergent strategy in institutional work. The paper finds that emergent strategy influences the normative and cognitive institution unconsciously and offers actors specialized identities. The present analysis also suggests that the emergent strategy-based institution needs a supporting and repairing system for maintenance.

This study primarily considers the micro aspect of emergent strategy and institutional work. It calls for detailed observation, interviews and archival materials which can make up a comprehensive in-depth picture. The authors remain skeptical to what people claim and try to get multiple sources of information. Also, the topic the authors deal with is relatively under-researched, and it is valuable to get explorative richness. Therefore, an interpretive qualitative approach is adopted to investigate actual events from “the native’s” perspective.

We found that an emergent strategy, which is realized but without previous plans, can also construct a “proto-type institution”, only in an unconscious way. The precondition is that the strategic resources of the focal firm are abundant enough for it to set the criteria of inter-organizational sanctions and rewards. In addition, the authors believe that supportive system and repairing system underpin the maintenance of established institutions.

First, by combining the research on emergent strategy to institutional work, the authors extend the scope of the latter by adding unconscious institutional work. Even if the agent-based view is adopted, rational actors can still influence the institution. Second, the authors explored the institutional outcome of emergent strategy, which fills the paucity of strategy process research. Third, aggression, the specific emergent strategy in this paper, can be turned into “plans for the future”. Its prevalence in the emerging market will attract more academic attention.

This chapter proposes an institutional framework for analysis of strategy in project-based organizations. The chapter argues that an analysis of the strategy of project-based organizations must take into account the interaction between deliberate and emergent strategic processes in this type of organizations. The chapter then goes on to argue that achieving this goal depends on addressing the ‘multicontextuality’ of project-based organizations – the fact that deliberate strategic processes respond to external environment, while emergent strategic processes are rooted in the organization's project portfolio. Based on this analysis, the chapter advances an institutional framework for analyzing project-based organizations which couples the institutional logic of the external environment, with the institutional logic which emerges from the internal ‘project field’. To explore this framework the chapter analyzes the emergence of the central-producer system in the Hollywood motion picture industry during the first quarter of the 20th century, and the role that Irving Thalberg played in creating this system.

This paper seeks to understand how new practices that challenge established norms and values become institutionalized by studying the development of corporate philanthropy in France over three decades (1979–2011). Our inductive qualitative study uncovers the processes that enable actors at both field- and organizational-levels to enhance a new practice’s internal and external legitimacy, ultimately leading to its institutionalization. In particular, we identify the central role of a community of practice as a bridge between the field-level, purposive interventions (theorizing, influencing policy) of an institutional entrepreneur and the organizational-level, emergent interventions (mobilizing, embedding) of frontline practitioners experimenting with the new divergent practice, thereby enabling its legitimation and, ultimately, its institutionalization. As such, our findings contribute to refining our understanding of institutionalization processes as inherently distributed and to uncovering communities of practice as the missing link between “heroic” entrepreneurs’ interventions and the hidden work of frontline practitioners implementing the new practice.

Institutional theories of organizations in sociology have focused on exteriority and constraint over the past three decades, in keeping with their roots in macrosocial theory (Parsons, 1956). These theories have mostly examined the macrocontext for organization- and field-level activities, rather than the microprocesses through which humans accomplish particular actions. However, with the widespread diffusion and adoption of neo-institutional theory (hereafter NIT) as the default framework within organizational sociology, some authors have been unable to resist extending it to encompass microlevel change processes. In particular, people studying entrepreneurship, broadly defined, have created a new category of actors, called institutional entrepreneurs (hereafter IEs), along with associated new concepts, such as embedded autonomy. Organization studies journals now routinely publish papers on the topic of institutional entrepreneurship (Leca & Naccache, 2006), and special sections of mainstream management journals also regularly feature such papers.

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.