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Open Access
Book part
Publication date: 1 May 2019

Yafan Fu and Roine Leiringer

The paper aims to investigate the prevailing institutional logics that underpin the organisational behaviours of Chinese contractors and the institutional complexity they face

Abstract

Purpose

The paper aims to investigate the prevailing institutional logics that underpin the organisational behaviours of Chinese contractors and the institutional complexity they face across several strategic areas when they undertake projects abroad.

Design/Methodology/Approach

The paper draws mainly on industry literature, reports and government websites to develop a typology of two ideal types of institutional logics that prevail among Chinese international contractors. The configurations of institutional complexity in different strategic areas are analysed through pattern-matching.

Findings

Two main logics are identified, namely, construction and investment logics. These logics in turn lead to patterns of volatile complexity in the strategic areas of business, technology, human resources and marketing; patterns of aligned complexity in operational and information technology strategic areas; and patterns of segregated complexity in financial strategic area.

Research Limitations/Implications

The paper presents an ongoing doctoral research. It provides a preliminary understanding of the institutional logics affecting Chinese international contractors and sets out the first step to understand the relationship between complex institutional environments and organisational responses.

Practical Implications

Chinese international contractors commonly face resistance, and at times resentment, from the local industries in the countries they operate. The findings of this paper are a first step towards a better understanding of why this is the case and what can be done to rectify the situation and improve long and short-term project performance.

Originality/Value

This paper provides practical implications for Chinese contractors to understand their internal context of institutional complexity and provides the basis for further understanding of Chinese contractors’ strategic responses.

Details

10th Nordic Conference on Construction Economics and Organization
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-051-1

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 7 March 2024

Oliver Mallett, Robert Wapshott and Nazila Wilson

This research paper generates new insights into the challenges of implementation in women’s enterprise policy. It argues that organisations involved in policy implementation need…

Abstract

Purpose

This research paper generates new insights into the challenges of implementation in women’s enterprise policy. It argues that organisations involved in policy implementation need to be understood as operating in a context of institutional pluralism and answers: How do organisations involved in the implementation of women’s enterprise policy manage the challenges of institutional pluralism?

Design/methodology/approach

Addressing the need for women’s enterprise policy to learn from the past, the research adopts a historical approach to the study of policy implementation through examination of the UK’s Phoenix Development Fund (1999–2008). It analyses a wide range of secondary sources to examine 34 projects funded and supported by the Phoenix Development Fund that targeted women entrepreneurs.

Findings

Potentially conflicting institutional logics associated with central government, mainstream business support and local communities were managed through four key processes: dominance; integration; constellation and bridging. The management of institutional pluralism was effective in delivering support to communities but not in providing an effective platform for learning in government or establishing sustainable, long-term mechanisms.

Originality/value

The paper develops an empirical contribution to practice through identification of processes to manage the challenges of institutional pluralism and lessons for community-engaged policy implementation. A theoretical contribution to academic debates is provided by the conceptualisation of these challenges in terms of institutional pluralism and the novel concept of institutional bridging. The study also demonstrates the value of historical methods for women’s enterprise policy to learn the lessons of the past.

Details

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1355-2554

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 12 February 2024

Zeeshan Mahmood, Zlatinka N. Blaber and Majid Khan

This paper aims to investigate the role of field-configuring events (FCEs) and situational context in the institutionalisation of sustainability reporting (SR) in Pakistan.

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to investigate the role of field-configuring events (FCEs) and situational context in the institutionalisation of sustainability reporting (SR) in Pakistan.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper uses insights from the institutional logics perspective and qualitative research design to analyse the interplay of the institutional logics, FCEs, situational context and social actors’ agency for the institutionalisation of SR among leading corporations in Pakistan. A total of 28 semi-structured interviews were carried out and were supplemented by analysis of secondary data including reports, newspaper articles and books.

Findings

The emerging field of SR in Pakistan is shaped by societal institutions, where key social actors (regulators, enablers and reporters) were involved in the institutionalisation of SR through FCEs. FCEs provided space for agency and were intentionally designed by key social actors to promote SR in Pakistan. The situational context connected the case organisations with FCEs and field-level institutional logics that shaped their decision to initiate SR. Overall, intricate interplay of institutional logics, FCEs, situational context and social actors’ agency has contributed to the institutionalisation of SR in Pakistan. Corporate managers navigated institutional logics based on situational context and initiated SR that is aligned with corporate goals and stakeholder expectations.

Practical implications

For corporate managers, this paper highlights the role of active agency in navigating and integrating institutional logics and stakeholders’ expectations in their decision-making process. For practitioners and policymakers, this paper highlights the importance of FCEs and situational context in the emergence and institutionalisation of SR in developing countries. From a societal point of view, dominance of business actors in FCEs highlights the need for non-business actors to participate in FCEs to shape logics and practice of SR for wider societal benefits.

Social implications

From a societal point of view, dominance of business actors in FCEs highlights the need for non-business actors to participate in FCEs to shape logics and practice of SR for wider societal benefits.

Originality/value

This paper focuses on the role of FCEs and situational context as key social mechanisms for explaining the institutionalisation of SR.

Details

Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, vol. 21 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1176-6093

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 15 December 2016

Vern L. Glaser, Nathanael J. Fast, Derek J. Harmon and Sandy E. Green

Although scholars increasingly use institutional logics to explain macro-level phenomena, we still know little about the micro-level psychological mechanisms by which institutional

Abstract

Although scholars increasingly use institutional logics to explain macro-level phenomena, we still know little about the micro-level psychological mechanisms by which institutional logics shape individual action. In this paper, we propose that individuals internalize institutional logics as an associative network of schemas that shapes individual actions through a process we call institutional frame switching. Specifically, we conduct two novel experiments that demonstrate how one particularly important schema associated with institutional logics – the implicit theory – can drive individual action. This work further develops the psychological underpinnings of the institutional logics perspective by connecting macro-level cultural understandings with micro-level situational behavior.

Details

How Institutions Matter!
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78635-429-7

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 1 January 2013

Roger Friedland

Based on the keynote address given at the conference on “Organizing Institutions: Creating, Enacting and Reacting to Institutional Logics” held at the Banff Springs Hotel in June…

Abstract

Based on the keynote address given at the conference on “Organizing Institutions: Creating, Enacting and Reacting to Institutional Logics” held at the Banff Springs Hotel in June 2012, this essay analyzes the relationship between Max Weber's polytheistic theory of value spheres and institutional logics, proposing that the latter project entails studying institutional logics through a framework of comparative religions. I argue that God, love, transcendence, and immanence are all potentially useful analytic categories by which to understand institutional logics.

Details

Institutional Logics in Action, Part A
Type: Book
ISBN:

Book part
Publication date: 1 January 2013

Anne-Claire Pache and Filipe Santos

In order to advance the micro-foundations of institutional theory, we explore how individuals within organizations experience and respond to competing institutional logics

Abstract

In order to advance the micro-foundations of institutional theory, we explore how individuals within organizations experience and respond to competing institutional logics. Starting with the premises that these responses are driven by the individuals’ degree of adherence to each competing logic (whether novice, familiar, or identified), and that individuals may resort to five types of responses (ignorance, compliance, resistance, combination or, compartmentalization), we develop a comprehensive model that predicts which response organizational members are likely to activate as they face two competing logics. Our model contributes to an emergent political theory of institutional change by predicting what role organizational members are likely to play in the organizational battles for logics dominance or in organizational attempts at crafting hybrid configurations.

Details

Institutional Logics in Action, Part B
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78190-920-1

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 12 January 2021

Roger Friedland

In this paper, I compare Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory, the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger upon whom Schatzki drew in its formation, and my own theory of…

Abstract

In this paper, I compare Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory, the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger upon whom Schatzki drew in its formation, and my own theory of institutional logics which I have sought to develop as a religious sociology of institution. I examine how Schatzki and I both differently locate our thinking at the level of practice. In this essay I also explore the possibility of appropriating Heidegger’s religious ontology of worldhood, which Schatzki rejects, in that project. My institutional logical position is an atheological religious one, poly-onto-teleological. Institutional logics are grounded in ultimate goods which are praiseworthy “objects” of striving and practice, signifieds to which elements of an institutional logic have a non-arbitrary relation, sources of and references for practical norms about how one should have, make, do or be that good, and a basis of knowing the world of practice as ordered around such goods. Institutional logics are constellations co-constituted by substances, not fields animated by values, interests or powers.

Because we are speaking against “values,” people are horrified at a philosophy that ostensibly dares to despise humanity’s best qualities. For what is more “logical” than that a thinking that denies values must necessarily pronounce everything valueless? Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism” (2008a, p. 249).

Details

On Practice and Institution: Theorizing the Interface
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-413-4

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 1 January 2013

Lærke Højgaard Christiansen and Michael Lounsbury

How do organizations manage multiple logics in response to institutional complexity? In this paper, we explore how intraorganizational problems related to multiple logics may be…

Abstract

How do organizations manage multiple logics in response to institutional complexity? In this paper, we explore how intraorganizational problems related to multiple logics may be addressed via the mechanism of institutional bricolage – where actors inside an organization act as “bricoleurs” to creatively combine elements from different logics into newly designed artifacts. An illustrative case study of a global brewery group’s development of such an artifact – a Responsible Drinking Guide Book – is outlined. We argue that intraorganizational institutional bricolage first requires the problematization of organizational identity followed by a social process involving efforts to renegotiate the organization’s identity in relation to the logics being integrated. We show that in response to growing pressures to be more “responsible,” a group of organizational actors creatively tinkered with and combined elements from social responsibility and market logics by drawing upon extant organizational resources from different times and spaces in an effort to reconstitute their collective organizational identity.

Details

Institutional Logics in Action, Part B
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78190-920-1

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 16 December 2016

Chang Lu and Trish Reay

We investigated how an institutional settlement concerning Native Indian gaming (the operation of gambling establishments such as casinos or bingo halls by Native Indian tribes…

Abstract

We investigated how an institutional settlement concerning Native Indian gaming (the operation of gambling establishments such as casinos or bingo halls by Native Indian tribes) was preserved over time in spite of three significant challenges. Building on previous literature on settlements and institutional logics, we see settlements as institutional arrangements that manage power dynamics and competing institutional logics. Based on our analyses of the settlement and three challenges in the Native gaming field, we suggest that even seemingly volatile institutional settlements can be maintained when powerful actors balance each other’s ability to modify the settlement and different actors invoke alternative institutional logic(s). We also find that these processes can be facilitated by the embeddedness and formality of the settlement. We contribute to the settlement literature by showing how settlements can be maintained when actors draw on equally strong sources of power and different logics to counter the actions of other actors. Furthermore, we shed light on “how institutions matter” by demonstrating how institutional settlements can facilitate field stability.

Details

How Institutions Matter!
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78635-431-0

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 10 April 2020

Koen Frenken, Taneli Vaskelainen, Lea Fünfschilling and Laura Piscicelli

We witness rising tensions between online gig-economy platforms, incumbent firms, regulators, and labor unions. In this chapter, we use the framework of institutional logics as an

Abstract

We witness rising tensions between online gig-economy platforms, incumbent firms, regulators, and labor unions. In this chapter, we use the framework of institutional logics as an analytical lens and scheme to understand the fundamental institutional challenges prompted by the advent of the online gig economy. We view gig-economy platforms as corporations that organize and self-regulate markets. In doing so, they span two parallel markets: the market for platforms competing to provide intermediation services and the market for the self-employed competing on platforms to provide peer-to-peer services. Self-regulation by platforms also weakens the traditional roles of the state. While the corporation and market logics empower the platform, they weaken self-employed suppliers as platforms’ design constrain suppliers to grow into a full-fledged business by limiting their entrepreneurial freedom. At the same time, current labor law generally does not classify suppliers as employees of the platform company, which limits the possibility to unionize. The current resolutions to this institutional misalignment are sought in “band aid solutions” at the level of sectors. Instead, as we argue, macro-institutional reform may be needed to re-institutionalize gig work into established institutional logics.

Details

Theorizing the Sharing Economy: Variety and Trajectories of New Forms of Organizing
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78756-180-9

Keywords

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