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Article
Publication date: 23 July 2020

Myroslava Hladchenko and Martin Benninghoff

This article aims to explore the implications of meansends decoupling at the state level for the implementation of the global model of the research university by the deans and…

Abstract

Purpose

This article aims to explore the implications of meansends decoupling at the state level for the implementation of the global model of the research university by the deans and department heads. Meansends decoupling at the state level implies that the policies and practices of the state are disconnected from its core goal of creating public welfare.

Design/methodology/approach

Data that form the basis of analysis were collected through twenty-four semi-structured interviews with deans and department heads from the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences who were in their positions during 2010–2014, at two Ukrainian universities.

Findings

Apart from meansends decoupling at the state level, which resulted in institutional complexity, case universities also sustained meansends decoupling at the organisational level, which led to cultural complexity. Institutional and cultural complexities experienced by the deans and department heads, as well as their practices and values deviated from the global model of the research university, entailed them sustaining meansends decoupling at the individual level. The degree of meansends decoupling maintained by the deans and department heads at the individual level varied depending on organisational, disciplinary and individual cultural dimensions.

Originality/value

This research contributes to the policy development and implementation studies highlighting how mismatches in policies at both state and organisational levels hinder the achievement of the intended outcomes.

Details

International Journal of Educational Management, vol. 34 no. 10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-354X

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 22 November 2023

Alexandra Krämer and Peter Winkler

The climate crisis presents a global threat. Research shows the necessity of joint communication efforts across different arenas—media, politics, business, academia and protest—to…

Abstract

Purpose

The climate crisis presents a global threat. Research shows the necessity of joint communication efforts across different arenas—media, politics, business, academia and protest—to address this threat. However, communication about social change in response to the climate crisis comes with challenges. These challenges manifest, among others, in public accusations of inconsistency in terms of hypocrisy and incapability against self-declared change agents in different arenas. This increasingly turns public climate communication into a “blame game”.

Design/methodology/approach

Strategic communication scholarship has started to engage in this debate, thereby acknowledging climate communication as an arena-spanning, necessarily contested issue. Still, a systematic overview of specific inconsistency accusations in different public arenas is lacking. This conceptual article provides an overview based on a macro-focused public arena approach and decoupling scholarship.

Findings

Drawing on a systematic literature review of climate-related strategic communication scholarship and key debates from climate communication research in neighboring domains, the authors develop a framework mapping how inconsistency accusations of hypocrisy and incapacity, that is, policy–practice and meansends decoupling, manifest in different climate communication arenas.

Originality/value

This framework creates awareness for the shared challenge of decoupling accusations across different climate communication arenas, underscoring the necessity of an arena-spanning strategic communication agenda. This agenda requires a communicative shift from downplaying to embracing decoupling accusations, from mutual blaming to approval of accountable ways of working through accusations and from confrontation to cooperation of agents across arenas.

Details

Journal of Communication Management, vol. 28 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1363-254X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 November 2021

Herman Aksom

The purpose of this paper is to offer a new analysis and understanding of the notion of deinstitutionalization. Deinstitutionalization of taken-for-granted practices as a natural…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to offer a new analysis and understanding of the notion of deinstitutionalization. Deinstitutionalization of taken-for-granted practices as a natural consequence of ever-increasing entropy seems to directly contradict the major institutional thesis, namely, that over time isomorphic forces increase and, as a result, possibilities for deinstitutionalization decrease culminating in the impossibility of abandoning in highly institutionalized fields.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is conceptual in nature. Oliver’s 1992 paper on deinstitutionalization is taken as a key text on the subject and as a starting point for building an alternative theory of deinstitutionalization. More broadly, institutional theory and organizational literature on diffusion/adoption are reviewed and synthesized.

Findings

The authors argue that possibilities for deinstitutionalization have been overestimated in institutional literature and offer a revisited account of deinstitutionalization vs institutional isomorphism and institutionalized vs highly diffusing-but-not-institutionalized practices. A freedom for choice between alternative practices exists during the pre-institutional stage but not when the field is already institutionalized. In contrast, institutionalized, taken-for-granted practices are immutable to any sort of functional and political pressures and they use to persist even when no technical value remains, thus deinstitutionalization on the basis of a functional dissatisfaction seems to be a paradox.

Research limitations/implications

By revisiting the nature and patterns of deinstitutionalization, the paper offers a better conceptual classification and understanding of how organizations adopt, maintain and abandon organizational ideas and practices. An important task of this paper is to reduce the scope of application of deinstitutionalization theory to make it more focused and self-consistent. There is, however, still not enough volume of studies on institutional factors of practices’ abandonment in institutional literature. The authors, therefore, acknowledge that more studies are needed to further improve both the former deinstitutionalization theory and the framework.

Originality/value

The authors offer a solution to this theoretical inconsistency by distinguishing between truly institutionalized practices and currently popular practices (highly diffused but non-institutionalized). It is only the latter that are subject to the norms of progress that allow abandoning and replacing existing organizational activities. Deinstitutionalization theory is, thus can be applied to popular practices that are subject to reevaluation, abandonment and replacement with new optimal practices while institutions are immutable to these norms of progress. Institutions are immutable to deinstitutionalization and the deinstitutionalization of optimal practices is subject to the logic of isomorphic convergence in organizational fields. Finally, the authors revisit a traditional two-stage institutional diffusion model to explain the possibility and likelihood of abandonment during different stages of institutionalization.

Details

International Journal of Organizational Analysis, vol. 31 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1934-8835

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 30 November 2017

Eva Boxenbaum, Thibault Daudigeos, Jean-Charles Pillet and Sylvain Colombero

This chapter examines how proponents of industrialization used multiple modes of communication to socially construct the rational myth of industrialization in the French…

Abstract

This chapter examines how proponents of industrialization used multiple modes of communication to socially construct the rational myth of industrialization in the French construction sector after World War II. We illuminate the respective roles of visual and verbal communication in this process. Our findings suggest that actors construct rational myths according to the following step-by-step method: first, they use visuals to suggest associations between new practices and valuable purposes; then they use verbal text to establish the technical rationality of certain practices; and lastly, they employ both verbal and visual communications to convey their mythical features.

Details

Multimodality, Meaning, and Institutions
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78743-332-8

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 February 2024

Thayla Zomer, Andy Neely and Paulo Savaget

How organisations interact with and respond to environmental pressures has been a long-term interest of organisational scholars. Still, it remains an under-theorised phenomenon…

Abstract

Purpose

How organisations interact with and respond to environmental pressures has been a long-term interest of organisational scholars. Still, it remains an under-theorised phenomenon from a project perspective. So far, there is limited understanding of how projects, which are composed by a constellation of organisations, “respond” to institutional pressures that are exerted on them. This research takes the perspective of projects as adopters/implementers of institutional pressures and analyses how they interact with, and respond to, such pressures. More specifically, this research explores how construction projects respond to the pressure of a Building Information Modelling (BIM) mandate.

Design/methodology/approach

Multiple in-depth case studies were conducted to explore the practical implementation of a BIM mandate in the UK and understand how the construction projects responded to the coercive pressures to implement a new policy mandate for process digitalisation. Multiple sources were employed for data collection and the data were analysed inductively. The findings identify a hybrid response comprising four distinct ways that projects might respond to an institutional pressure.

Findings

We find that projects decouple both from the content and from the intended purpose of a policy, i.e. there are two variance of a policy-practice decoupling phenomenon in projects. The findings also reveal the underlying conditions leading to decoupling.

Originality/value

We advance decoupling literature so that it better applies to the temporary, distributed and interdependent work conducted via projects. Second, we define decoupling in projects as a provisional and fragmented process of wayfinding through heterogeneous institutional spaces, and discuss the potential policy-practice assemblages in projects, influenced by how, if and when project members' activities decouple from the many and often contradicting institutional pressures they face. Third, we discuss how the qualitatively different forms of decoupling that we identified in our work may act as part of a legitimation process in ambiguous situations whereby projects might share a resemblance of conformity with institutional pressures when they are de facto only partially conforming to them.

Details

International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1753-8378

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 9 May 2014

Nadezda Nazarova

To study the use of budgeting in the uncertain and unpredictable context of seasonal logistics in the Arctic. Specifically addresses the question of why and how budgeting turns…

Abstract

Purpose

To study the use of budgeting in the uncertain and unpredictable context of seasonal logistics in the Arctic. Specifically addresses the question of why and how budgeting turns out to be the main management control tool in an extremely unstable environment.

Design/methodology/approach

Built on a case study of a Russian oil-producing company operating in The High North, this chapter reports on the rationales for use of budgetary slack by different divisions within the company.

Findings

Inflexible budgeting better fits into the (natural/geographical) context than into the business process. In this respect, excessive budget detalization and informational update may be not facilitating the operational process but confusing. Decoupling demonstrated by a budgetary slack is the normal condition for stable organizational performance.

Practical implications

Instead of setting up fences between the divisions, budgeting may be considered a converging and an adjusting factor to assess collective performance. Social embeddedness of budgetary slack in contemporary organizations sets the scene for other types of budgeting games based on trust, norms of reciprocity and collective performance.

Originality/value

The new – cultural – dimension introduces decoupling in a new perspective by demonstrating the integrating or coupling meaning of cultural practices.

Details

Performance Measurement and Management Control: Behavioral Implications and Human Actions
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78350-378-0

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 12 January 2023

Yupei Liu, Weian Li and Qiankun Meng

This study aims to explore whether investors’ inattention is associated with firms’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) decoupling, which is defined as the misalignment…

1341

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to explore whether investors’ inattention is associated with firms’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) decoupling, which is defined as the misalignment between the implementation and incorporation of ESG policies.

Design/methodology/approach

Focusing on a sample of the components of ESG ratings for China Securities Index (CSI) 300 companies between 2017 and 2019, the authors test the relationship between firms’ ESG decoupling level and mutual fund investors’ distraction by applying exogenous shocks to their portfolios.

Findings

The results show that firms with distracted mutual fund investors engage in more external than internal ESG actions, leading to a high ESG decoupling level. Mutual fund investors use “threat of exit” rather than “voice” as a governance mechanism to influence corporate ESG decoupling. While external ESG actions mitigate stock price crash risk, internal ESG actions increase firm value; firms with a high ESG decoupling level suffer lower valuations.

Practical implications

This study has implications for increasing the congruence between firms’ external and internal ESG actions, thereby improving firms’ ESG performance and long-term economic outcomes.

Social implications

This paper helps policy-makers and regulators to reassess how ESG policies can be implemented to be consistent with organizations’ core business activities.

Originality/value

Contributing to prior studies of greenwashing and corporate social responsibility decoupling, this paper extends decoupling literature by revisiting ESG impacts in an integrated framework and explores the antecedents of corporate ESG decoupling from the perspective of institutional investor monitoring.

Details

Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, vol. 14 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2040-8021

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 March 2023

Chang He, Fu Jia, Liukai Wang, Lujie Chen and Kieran Fernandes

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) decoupling indicates a misalignment between how firms report CSR and what firms actually practice with respect to CSR. The purpose of this…

1337

Abstract

Purpose

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) decoupling indicates a misalignment between how firms report CSR and what firms actually practice with respect to CSR. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between CSR decoupling and financial performance and the factors affecting this relationship.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper collects and combines secondary panel data from multiple sources of Chinese listed firms from 2008 to 2020 to test the direct impact of CSR decoupling on firms’ financial performance and the moderating role of customer structure and operational slack.

Findings

This paper finds that CSR decoupling is negatively associated with firms’ financial performance. These findings further suggest that the negative relationship can be suppressed by customer stability and operational slack, but amplified by customer concentration. These conclusions remain robust to alternate measures of independent and dependent variables and narrower samples.

Originality/value

In the literature, the effect of CSR on firms’ financial performance is inconclusive. This is the first study to examine the impact of CSR decoupling on firms’ financial performance and the factors affecting this relationship. This paper contributes to the CSR decoupling literature from an operations and supply chain management perspective.

Details

International Journal of Operations & Production Management, vol. 43 no. 12
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-3577

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 15 May 2023

Celina Gisch, Bernhard Hirsch and David Lindermüller

Conflicting institutional logics are thought to be factors that hinder organizational changes in public institutions. Thus, this study explores the different strategies of public…

Abstract

Purpose

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.

Design/methodology/approach

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.

Findings

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.

Originality/value

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.

Details

Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, vol. 20 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1176-6093

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 25 November 2019

Nina Eliasoph, Jade Y. Lo and Vern L. Glaser

In organizations that have to meet demands from multiple sponsors, and that mix missions from different spheres, such as “civic,” “market,” “family,” how do participants orient…

Abstract

In organizations that have to meet demands from multiple sponsors, and that mix missions from different spheres, such as “civic,” “market,” “family,” how do participants orient themselves, so they can interact appropriately? Do participants’ practical navigation techniques have unintended consequences? To address these two questions, the authors draw on an ethnography of US youth programs whose sponsors required multiple, conflicting logics, speed, and precise documentation. The authors develop a concept, navigation techniques: participants’ shared unspoken methods of orienting themselves and appearing to meet demands from multiple logics, in institutionally complex projects that require frequent documentation. These techniques’ often have unintended consequences.

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