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This book chapter takes an institutional perspective on competing logics in global markets concerned with sustainability values and how market actors in the form of buyers and sellers attempt to solve these conflicting situations. We do this by identifying competing institutional logics in global market contexts aiming for sustainability values, together with techniques for navigating these competing institutional logics in the organizational field studied. As an empirical illustration, we use a case study of buyers and sellers in two different markets where sustainability has come into focus for their market relationships. This viewpoint allows us to better understand how global market actors deal with the competing institutional logics in their market context. We make three contributions with this research: firstly, we identify the institutional logics in global markets towards sustainability; secondly, we demonstrate how global market actors prioritize among the competing logics and their market relationships and thirdly, we outline what this means for the relationship between buyers and sellers in global markets towards sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to examine conflicting institutional demands on individual frontline employees in hybrid public sector organisations. Specifically, it examines the competing accountability pressures professional and commercial logics exerted on academics at a business school, how individual lecturers responded to such pressures, and what drove these responses.

The paper draws on a case study of an English business school and is informed by the literatures on institutional logics and hybrid organisations.

The paper shows that the co-existence of professional and commercial logics at the case organisation exerted competing accountability pressures on lecturers. It moreover shows that sometimes deliberately and purposefully, sometimes ad hoc or even coincidentally, lecturers drew on a wide range of responses to these conflicting pressures, including compliance, defiance, combination and compartmentalisation.

The paper sheds light on individual level responses to competing institutional logics and associated accountability pressures, as well as on their drivers. It also highlights the drawbacks of user, customer or citizen accountability mechanisms, showing that a strong emphasis on them in knowledge-intensive public organisations can have severe dysfunctional effects.

To understand the context surrounding the sustainable supplier management (SSM) process (i.e. selection, development and evaluation), this paper aims to explore institutional logics existing in the Ecuadorian cocoa supply chain (SC). By considering local characteristics and sustainability practices, this study illustrates how competing logic influences SSM.

This paper uses a multiple-case study method for which the authors interviewed different cocoa SC members in Ecuador and used a ground-up approach to analyse the data and reveal singularities influencing sustainability management.

The analysis uncovered two main logics operating within the Ecuadorian cocoa SC SSM process: a commercial logic (e.g. potential for market access, product traceability) and a sustainability logic (e.g. local development and traditions/cultural issues). These logics address market demand requirements; however, some local producers’ needs that impact SSM remains unexplored such as the existence of a regional ancestral culture that poses sustainability as a dominant logic with meaning beyond the triple bottom line. While the two logics have influenced supplier sustainability performance, this paper finds that, of the three SSM sub-processes (selection, development and evaluation), supplier development was the most relevant sub-process receiving attention from SC managers in the studied context.

By understanding the differences in logic and needs, SC managers can better develop strategies for SSM.

The study highlighted in this paper investigated the underexplored topic of the effects that competing logic may have on SSM. This paper focusses on the supplier’s point of view regarding sustainability requirements, addressing a consistent research gap in the literature.

This article aims to increase the understanding of the role of individual actors and arenas in dealing with multiple institutional logics in family firms.

This study follows a case-study approach of two family-owned newspaper companies. Based on interviews and secondary sources, the empirical material was analysed focussing on three institutional logics, that is, family logic, management logic and journalistic logic.

First, the authors show how and in which arenas competing logics are balanced in family-owned newspaper companies. Second, the authors highlight that family owners are central actors in the process of balancing different institutional logics. Further, they analyse how family members can become hybrid owner-managers, meaning that they have access to all institutional logics and become central actors in the balancing process.

The authors reveal how multiple institutional logics are balanced in family firms by including formal actors and arenas as additional lenses. Therefore, owning family members, especially hybrid owner-managers, are the best-suited individual actors to balance competing logics. Hybrid owner-managers are members of the owner families who are also skilled in one or several professions.

Employing institutional logic and institutional work as its theoretical framework, this study analyzes scholars' reactions to performance measurement systems in academia.

Large datasets were collected over time, combining both quantitative and qualitative elements. The data were gathered from a two-wave survey in 2010 (966 respondents) and 2015 (672 respondents), conducted among scholars performing teaching- and research-oriented tasks in three Finnish universities.

The analysis showed statistically significant changes over time in the ways that the respondents were positioned in three major groups influenced by different institutional logics. This study contributes to the international debate on institutional change in universities by showing that in Finnish universities, emerging business logics and existing professional logics can co-exist and be blended among a growing group of academics. The analysis of qualitative open-ended answers suggests that performance measurement systems have led to changes in institutional logic, which have influenced the scholars participating in institutional work at the microlevel in academia.

While most scholars remain critical of performance measurement systems in universities, the fact that many academics are adapting to performance measurement systems highlights significant changes that are generally occurring in academia.

While most extant studies have focused on field- and organizational-level analyses, this study focuses on understanding how the adoption of performance measurement systems affects institutional logic and institutional work at the microlevel. Moreover, the study's cross-sectional research setting increases society's understanding of institutional evolution in academia.

Literature shows that a strong link between sustainability control systems and sustainability management (SM) fosters sustainability development (SD) and compliance with regulatory requirements and stakeholder expectations. Research on the integration of SM and its control mechanisms in corporate business remains scarce. This study aims to focus on Sustainability Management Control Systems (S)MCS applied in Electric Utility Companies (EUC), which experience close scrutiny by its stakeholders in as much as they play an important role in climate change agendas.

The methodological approach includes in-depth expert interviews within seven Austrian EUC followed by qualitative content analysis. This study builds on “MCS as a package” by Malmi and Brown (2008). Institutional logics (IL) are used for the theoretical approach.

Results show that several IL are involved in implementing strategic SMCS in EUC. Managers cope by integrating emerging hybrid logics, selectively coupled SMCS and making sense by building a communication bridge between the strategic and operative levels to create awareness.

Results show that managers in EUC have to acquire a new hybrid logic for SD. This implies the use of informal controls and a strong focus on administrative and cultural controls as the main control mechanisms for SM.

The paper contributes to MCS research by using the scarcely applied theoretical framework of IL. Findings facilitate a better understanding of the control mechanisms behind SM and the coping strategies of managers in applying SMCS.

In tourism research, crisis management mostly refers to operational, on-location, chaotic measures taken as a crisis strikes a tourism destination. Related to COVID-19, this paper focuses on public initiatives representing strategic-oriented crisis management while showing that such initiatives may not help those needing support. More precisely, the paper discusses and exemplifies the conflict of logics between private sector interests and public initiatives related to crisis management in tourism.

The main data source is a structured newspaper review of COVID-19 and tourism as covered in the Swedish press, comprising more than 4,000 items.

Findings indicate logics manifested at different levels and a logic gap between small and large firms. Large firms are potentially better able to adapt but tend to wait passively for financial support rather than reformulate their business operations.

The paper contributes to research on crisis management in tourism by taking a public, societal-level view of crisis management juxtaposed against the local actors' sphere of operations. The conflict of logics proves how support needs to be improved to better help a sector in crisis. Thematic logics are introduced as a concept and captured in the conflicts between the present and the future, survival and change and operations and aggregates in crisis management. Broadly, the paper provides valuable insights into the future of tourism while indicating policy failures in the sector.

The purpose of this paper is to use theories of institutional logics and institutional entrepreneurship to examine how and why macro-, meso-, and micro-level influences inter-relate in the implementation of integrated transitional care out of hospital in the English National Health Service.

The authors conducted an ethnographic case study of a hospital and surrounding services within a large urban centre in England. Specific methods included qualitative interviews with patients/caregivers, health/social care providers, and organizational leaders; observations of hospital transition planning meetings, community “hub” meetings, and other instances of transition planning; reviews of patient records; and analysis of key policy documents. Analysis was iterative and informed by theory on institutional logics and institutional entrepreneurship.

Organizational leaders at the meso-level of health and social care promoted a partnership logic of integrated care in response to conflicting institutional ideas found within a key macro-level policy enacted in 2003 (The Community Care (Delayed Discharges) Act). Through institutional entrepreneurship at the micro-level, the partnership logic became manifest in the form of relationship work among health and social care providers; they sought to build strong interpersonal relationships to enact more integrated transitional care.

This study has three key implications. First, efforts to promote integrated care should strategically include institutional entrepreneurs at the organizational and clinical levels. Second, integrated care initiatives should emphasize relationship-building among health and social care providers. Finally, theoretical development on institutional logics should further examine the role of interpersonal relationships in facilitating the “spread” of logics between macro-, meso-, and micro-level influences on inter-organizational change.

Digital technologies have fundamentally changed organizations, industries, and even the society. Although institutional theory provides rich array of perspectives to both the content and dynamics of such changes, research at the intersection of institutional scholarship and digitalization has remained scarce. In this essay, I draw on the institutional logics perspective to elaborate digitalization as involving a new set of interconnected managerial beliefs and norms, organizational practices, and diverse material and social structures that together complement and challenge the established logics in organizations and institutional fields. I draw attention to two central organizing principles in the logic of digitalization: the pursuit of digital omniscience – the efforts to represent and conceive the world through digital data – and digital omnipotence – the efforts to bring activities inside and outside organizations under the control of information systems. I conclude the essay by elaborating how the institutional logics perspective can help understand organization-level efforts to leverage digitalization by incumbent corporations and new digital-native companies.

The present study aims to describe the implementation of a facilitated dialogue model intended to improve communication across professional logics and knowledge boundaries in two units of a large health-care organization in Sweden.

This is a mixed-methods study with interviews, field observations and follow- up questionnaires that were conducted during the implementation process.

The conclusion drawn in this study is that it is possible to change and improve the dialogue between health-care professionals with the help of a tailored, facilitated dialogue model. The authors found that different professional logics can indeed meet and share perspectives if the right conditions are provided. Moreover, an improved dialogue between different professional groups may contribute to work satisfaction, engagement, social cohesion and communication between professionals.

This study shows that the right organizational conditions, such as support from managers, must exist if the model’s inherent possibilities are to be used. Inhouse facilitation may be a sustainable model for facilitated workplace dialogue when its implementation is supported by the overall organization.

The contribution is an empirically based analysis of a new form of model for mediating perspectives within an organization with distinct professional roles. This study shows how, under the right conditions, the model can contribute to a perspective awareness and thus a more mature work organization.