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Organizational identity and organizational legitimacy are related constructs, but comprehensive studies of the relationship have been lacking in the literature of organizational studies. This paper aims to propose a framework that includes four possible relationships between organizational legitimacy and identity.

The authors evaluate the causes of each of these relationships and an important consequence of the relationship: their influences on organizational adaptation.

With a series of propositions, the authors make a tentative, but valuable, move toward integrating two broad streams of social perspective of organizing, institutional theory and organizational identity and call for research efforts in this direction.

The paper is the first one that explores the relationship between organizational identity and organizational legitimacy in a comprehensive way.

The purpose of this paper is to present a metaphor of organizations as discursive gravitational fields.

The metaphor was built based on Einstein's general theory of relativity and Lacan's theory of discourse. The dialogue with organization studies was made possible through the utilization of the communicative theory of organizations as theoretical background.

A number of insights were derived from the metaphor. First, organizations can distort their discursive surroundings up to the point of stopping any flux of independent discourse; second, the boundaries of organizations are to be understood as a gradient of discursive influence which fades away, often much beyond its legal limits; that also creates degrees of “stakeholding”, corresponding to different levels of influence and dependence on a specific organization by their stakeholders; third, the discursive fields of different organizations are often superposed, creating the phenomena of interference and superposition among organizational discursive fields; fourth, speciation among organizations is related to the kind of symbolic element attracted predominantly by their surrounding fields; and fifth, Lacanian theory suggests that no absolute and permanent discursive power is possible to persons or organizations, leaving room to the continuous production of new and potentially emancipating meaning, whose appearance, however, can be very difficult to predict due to its “discursive quantum nature”.

This metaphor can help researchers and managers to interpret the discursive phenomena involving organizations as a whole, as well as organizational relations with stakeholders.

By bringing together organization theory, Einstein's and Lacan's theories, this paper provides a new view on the relation between organizations, discourse and society.

The purpose of this paper is to examine institutional influences on the customer service (CS) and complaints handling (CH) practices of the Australian Internet industry.

The study adopted a qualitative research methodology using semi-structured interview as a research method. The study was informed by constructivist/interpretive research paradigm approaches to knowledge. Eleven senior executives from key Internet industry stakeholder organizations were interviewed.

Using the neo-institutional theory lens, this study found that the institutional forces (regulatory, customer and competition pressures) played a pivotal role in bringing all Internet industry stakeholders together to address CS/CH shortcomings in the old Telecommunications Consumer Protection (TCP) Code 2007. This led to significant changes to the CS/CH practices detailed in the revised TCP Code 2012. The study findings revealed that frequent and fateful collaborations between central institutional actors have led to the emergence of organizational fields. The actors identified in the emerging organizational fields actively influence the CS/CH practices and the subsequent implementation of the practices in vLISPs.

The study focused on the functional aspects of service quality (SQ). Technical aspects of SQ is equally important, and future research needs to consider both aspects of SQ when assessing overall performance of vLISPs.

The study findings encourage vLISP managers to continue collaboration with external stakeholders and develop customer-friendly practices that deliver desirable CS/CH outcomes.

The study findings revealed that when all vLISP industry stakeholders collaborate with each other on a focal issue, there is noticeable progress towards development of CS practices that will contribute to a better CS experience.

An evidence-based approach was used towards understanding and explaining how and why institutional actors of technology-based service organizations act together. A significant contribution arising from this study is the identification and discussion of emerging organizational fields comprising the central actors in the Internet industry. These emerging organizational fields have the potential to develop into mature organizational fields and inform future CS/CH practices and consumer protection policies in the Australian Internet industry.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a road map for carrying out field-level ethnography, focussing on the inter-organizational space collectively constructed and shared by communities of organizations.

The argument is developed through a critical and integrated review of relevant literature.

Field-level ethnographic work requires researchers to define the field they are exploring, locate their specific research site within it, capture the field through ethnographic practices that take into account the unique characteristics of this local field as a social phenomenon, and deploy various conceptualizations of inter-organizational spheres in order to enrich their analysis and interpretations.

This paper offers practical insights for practitioners of field-level ethnography.

As organizations are open-systems that reside and take part in much broader, inter-organizational spaces, the author makes a case for going beyond the more common practice of carrying out ethnographic field work in a single organization, to doing field-level ethnography. The paper discusses various theorizations of the inter-organizational sphere, suggest how to carry field-level ethnography in practice, and note its peculiar challenges.

This paper aims to trace subsequent steps of the sustainability reporting evolution in terms of changes in the organisation fields and professional jurisdictions involved. As such, it highlights the (interrelated) organisational and professional challenges associated with the progressive incorporation of “sustainability” within corporate reporting.

The paper draws on Suddaby and Viale’s (2011) theorisation of how professionals reshape organisational fields to highlight how organisational spaces, actors, rules and professional capital evolve alongside the incorporation of sustainability within corporate reporting.

The paper shows organisational spaces, actors, rules and professional capital mobilised during the recent evolution of sustainability reporting, starting from a period in which there was no space for sustainability, to more recent periods in which sustainability gained increasing momentum beyond initial niches, and culminating in more integrated forms of sustainability reporting.

Although the analysis is limited to empirical evidence collected by prior research and practice on sustainability reporting, the paper offers a view to imagine how the incorporation of sustainability within corporate reporting relies on and affects organisational fields and professional jurisdictions.

The paper offers a lens to interpret corporate and professional challenges associated with the more recent evolutions of sustainability reporting practice and standard setting. It also allows framing the papers accepted in the special issue on “new challenges in sustainability reporting” and concludes by suggesting an agenda for future research.

Development and expansion of the communication management function in organizations has recently been discussed in relation to the concept of institutionalization. Empirical evidence has illustrated that the role of communication executives and communication managers varies between organizations, and could also be subjected to change within an organization. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize institutionalization of communication management as a process. It aims to develop a theoretical framework that integrates important factors that influence and regulate this process.

A literature review resulted in a number of factors potentially influencing the institutionalization process. These factors were attributed to three main theoretical areas and four different levels of analysis, using institutional theory as a guiding framework. The theoretical areas and analysis levels, were proposed to be mutually interdependent, and were compiled in a theoretical framework, illustrated in a model.

The theoretical framework includes three main areas: organizational structure, social capital, and perceptions of the profession; and four levels of analysis: the societal, the organizational field, the organizational and the individual levels.

This paper contributes to the study of institutionalization of communication management in organizations by providing a theoretical framework, which can be used to further investigate the development of the communication function and the role of communication executives and communication managers in organizations. By conceptualizing institutionalization of communication management as a process, and exploring and defining the important elements that influence and regulate this process, an important theoretical contribution to the field is made.

Elaborates on the diversity of the people movement between the USA and Mexico and the effect on goods and resources for the two, particularly regarding HIV/AIDS collaboration. Makes observations about the US/Mexico political‐organizational field, such as the governmental, service, activist, academic and religious. Spotlights San Diego – Tijuana as binational fields which prove a sound example of what can be achieved at local and federal levels – for the benefit of both communities. Concludes with policy recommendations for effective binational collaboration on the US and Mexican sides, with the USA providing more funds for the Mexican side of the border.

This article explores two intermediary organizations that are attempting to alter the landscape of US education by building organizational networks and professional capital that disrupt traditional relationships between K-12 education and higher education.

The work is a theory-driven, comparative case study of the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) and the National Network of Education Research-Practice Partnerships (NNERPP). Through the lens of institutional theory, the authors employ an extended case method that uses comparative analysis of situationally-embedded organizational case studies to build theory.

The two organizations play an intermediary role by The two organizations play an intermediary role by establishing new standards, norms, and patterns of practice between higher education and local systems of education. In doing so, these organizations serve as meso-institutions, alliances that mediate the processes of institutionalization and play essential parts in developing new facets of infrastructure and new professional identities that hold the potential for nurturing and sustaining professional capital. System leadership hinges on strategic bricolage to identify near-term next steps that align with longer-term strategic goals related to field building.

Professional capital as a concept was initially characterized from a bottom-up perspective, valorizing the agentive dimensions of human, social and decisional capital in opposition to top-down, centralized control. Our conceptualization of intermediary organizations as meso-institutions addresses how the processes of mediated networking and system leadership operate to build professional capital in specific ways that crystallize institutional change.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice for the analysis of power in multinational corporations. Therefore, they adopt and apply the Theory of Practice on power struggles within the board as the key field of power within the multinational company (MNC), which is interwoven with power struggles at the intraorganizational and interorganizational level of an MNC and its environment.

This paper describes the main elements of Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice and demonstrates their applicability to power struggles in MNCs, particularly through the development of a multi-level framework. This argument is illustrated by the case of a large German MNC’s supervisory board.

Extending Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice to the analysis of power in MNCs provides several advantages. Above all, we show the relevance of the board as the key field of power within MNCs that influences and is influenced by power constellations and power struggles throughout the MNC and its environment. Thereby, a more differentiated picture of (key) actors involved in power struggles in MNCs, and a deeper comprehension of the very nature of power in MNCs is achieved.

Placing the supervisory board at the center implies that our framework is relevant to the study of not only power in MNCs but also boards. In addition, the authors arrive at practical implications for organizational actors and politics. As they concentrate on the presentation and illustration of the conceptual framework, the discussion of its methodological applicability options, as well as the integration of the various, detailed empirical findings of the previous MNC literature remain limited.

In contrast to earlier studies, this paper introduces a theoretical perspective that is not limited to either the micro-, meso- or macro-level of organizational analysis, but includes them and balances aspects of structure and agency well. The value of this fresh perspective on power in MNCs and its capability to deal with the complexity of this specific type of organization is demonstrated.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the obsolescence process of Microsoft Academic Search (MAS) as well as the effects of this decline in the coverage of disciplines and journals, and their influence in the representativeness of organizations.

The total number of records and those belonging to the most reputable journals (1,762) and organizations (346) according to the Field Rating indicator in each of the 15 fields and 204 sub-fields of MAS, have been collected and statistically analysed in March 2014, by means of an automated querying process via http, covering academic publications from 1700 to present.

MAS has no longer been updated since 2013, although this phenomenon began to be glimpsed in 2011, when its coverage plummeted. Throughout 2014, indexing of new records is still ongoing, but at a minimum rate, without following any apparent pattern.

There are also retrospective records being indexed at present. In this sense, this research provides a picture of what MAS offered during March 2014 being queried directly via http.

The unnoticed obsolescence of MAS affects to the quality of the service offered to its users (both those who engage in scientific information seeking and also those who use it for quantitative purposes).

The predominance of Google Scholar (GS) as monopoly in the academic search engines market as well as the prevalence of an open construction model (GS) vs a closed model (MAS).

A complete longitudinal analysis of disciplines, journals and organizations on MAS has been performed for the first time identifying an unnoticed obsolescence. Any public explanation or disclaimer note has been announced from the responsible company, something incomprehensible given its implications for the reliability and validity of bibliometric data provided on disciplines, journals, authors and congress as well as their fair representation on the academic search engine.