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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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

This paper explores how conflicting institutional logics shape the behaviors of macro- and micro-level actors in their use of a calculative practice. Thereby, this paper explains how quantification can undermine the intended purpose of a governance system based on a single number.

The study draws upon the literature on calculative practices and institutional logics to present the case of how a single number—specifically the conversion factor for Atlantic Cod, established by macro-level actors for the purposes of governance within the Norwegian fishing industry—is interpreted and used by micro-level actors in the industry. The study is based on documents, field observations and interviews with fishers, landing facilities, and control authorities.

The use of the conversion factor, while intended to protect fish stock and govern industry actions, does not always align with the institutional logics of micro-level actors. Especially during the winter season, these actors may seek to serve their interests, leading to potential system gaming. The reliance on a single number that overlooks seasonal nuances can motivate unintended behaviors, undermining the governance system’s intentions.

Integrating the literature on calculative practices with an institutional logics perspective, this study offers novel insights into the challenges of using quantification for the governance of complex industries. In particular, the paper reveals that when the logics of macro- and micro-level actors conflict in a single-number governance system, unintended outcomes arise due to a domination of the macro-level logics.

Neo-institutional theories and their constructs have so far only received limited attention in supply chain management literature. As recent supply chain disruptions and their ripple effects affect actors on a broader institutional level, supply chains are confronted with multiple new and emerging, often conflicting, institutional demands. This study aims to unpack the notion of institutional complexity behind supply chain disruptions and present a novel institutional framework to lower supply chain susceptibility and increase supply chain resilience.

The authors identify the patterns of complexity that shape the supply chain susceptibility, namely, distance, diversity and ambiguity, and present three institutional responses to susceptibility to increase supply chain resilience, namely, institutional entrepreneurship, institutional alignment and institutional layering.

This paper analyses the current situational relevance to better understand the various and patterned ways how logics influence both supply chain susceptibility and the supply chain resilience. The authors derive six propositions on how complexity can be reduced for supply chain susceptibility and can be increased for supply chain resilience.

By expanding and extending research on institutional complexity to supply chains, the authors broaden how researchers in supply chain management view supply chain susceptibility, thereby providing managers with theory to think differently about supply chains and its resilience.

This study aims to investigate how and why a new management accounting control (MAC) regime emerged in a previously government-owned energy company with a Soviet past in the context of changing politico-economic dynamics in Ukraine.

Drawing upon data from a case study of a large Ukrainian energy company with a Soviet past that has undergone major transformations in recent years, the authors analyze MAC regime changes in the company from an institutional logics perspective. All primary and secondary data used in this study were collected from 2012 to 2016. Retrospective interviews and extensive use of written materials, including corporate documents and other publicly available data, helped them reconstruct those events, which the authors could not observe personally.

The authors observed that MAC regime changes in the company mirror; overall changes in the political and economic environment and Ukraine’s willingness to become closer to the West. The company seems to follow liberal Western market logics and eliminate those of Soviet heritage. The MAC regime changes seemed to contribute to the company’s survival during challenges caused by the political and economic crises that began in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and other Ukrainian territories in the East of the country, demonstrating the usefulness of the new MAC regime and overall business logic.

This study adds to the literature on management accounting and control change in emerging economies and extractive industries by highlighting the role of changing institutional logics in shaping a MAC regime. The authors explain why, in some contexts (i.e. Ukraine), organizational actors accept and favor liberal Western market logic.

A particularly significant facet of this study concerns its extension of the role of MAC and the way it is perceived in a new international context in times of significant transformation. The results suggest that MAC regime change may be favorably received if it is based on local values and aspirations.

The article investigates the institutional setup of e-lending in public libraries in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Our point of departure is that e-lending has necessitated new library collaborations between local, regional and national levels, and therefore, institutional e-lending setups have emerged. The study seeks to provide better understanding of how the institutional setups are structured, how governance logics have shaped them and what tensions and dynamics become visible in the key actors’ problematisations of these setups.

The study is situated in the neo-institutional tradition and applies the institutional logics perspective. The research questions are answered by taking a qualitative approach, grounded in an extensive interview study with representatives of libraries, publishers and policy actors in three Scandinavian countries. To provide in-depth insight into e-lending setups, the scope of empirical material is then limited to accounts the central library and policy actors involved in establishing e-lending.

The analysis shows that the e-lending setups are both similar (especially when it comes to financing), and different across Scandinavia, especially when it comes to centralisation and involvement of librarians in this task. The differences are attributed to the influence of different governance logics (question of administrative autonomy, collaboration in the field and existing legal and political frames), and to what extent the digital and market logics are incorporated or rejected in the field.

The study provides new insights into the question of how Scandinavian public libraries face the consequences of the digitalisation of book distribution and consumption by investigating how they organise their e-lending services. This has not been explored before, notably in a comparative perspective.

The present paper aims to focus on the role which German controllers play so far in the process of sustainable transformation in for-profit organizations, the current obstacles to a wider engagement here and ways to overcome these obstacles.

The analysis combines two qualitative study designs. Empirical data is generated via a job advertisement analysis and an explorative survey with 107 subjects from management accounting/controlling and sustainability management. The generated data is interpreted against the background of the theory of institutional logics and Abbott’s (1988) theory of professional jurisdiction.

We find that controllers are in a state of tension. On the one hand, the pressure to integrate sustainability into companies is increasing. On the other hand, they seem to be rather reluctant to get involved. The institutional logics that shape their profession play an important role here, as does an unclear relationship with the sustainability department, which has its own claims here. Based on these observations, we identify the core obstacles to the transformation of the controllers’ profession and discuss solutions which can guide the transformation of this profession.

The present paper provides insights from a unique combination of different quantitative study designs and different perspectives on the possible role that controllers can play in advancing sustainable transformation in companies.

In this study, the authors investigate how institutions influence the adoption and implementation of a quality management practice (QMP) that was originally developed for Western developed countries but is being used in sub-Saharan African firms. The authors’ aim is to contribute to the literature on how local and broader institutions in sub-Saharan African firms impact the adoption of QMP (specifically ISO 9001:2015) and how the firm's situated rationalities shape the associated change in management accounting practices.

The authors applied the extended Burns and Scapens framework and employed a case study research approach. The authors collected empirical data through semi-structured interviews and secondary sources and used direct content analysis to analyse the data.

The authors’ findings suggest that although personal values and commitments to modernising the business are the main drivers of change, the continued dominance of traditional accounting logic restricts the necessary change in management accounting to support effective QMP implementation.

This study emphasises the importance of aligning institutional logics to fully realise the benefits of new strategies and identifies technical competencies, access to information and communication technology, and clarity about the role of management accounting in modernising management practices as critical success factors.

This study is original in that it provides insights into the impact of contextual factors in less developed countries on institutionalising QMP and management accounting change, demonstrating the importance of aligning management accounting change with proposed organisational strategies to fully realise their benefits.

In developing countries, how risk management technologies influence management accounting and control (MAC) practices is under-researched. By drawing on insights from institutional studies, this study aims to examine the multiple institutional pressures surrounding an entity and influencing its risk-based management control (RBC) system – that is, how RBC appears in an emerging market attributed to institutional multiplicity.

The authors used qualitative case study research methods to collect empirical evidence from a privately owned Egyptian insurance company.

The authors observed that in the transformation to risk-based controls, especially in socio-political settings such as Egypt, changes in MAC systems were consistent with the shifts in the institutional context. Along with changes in the institutional environment, the case company sought to configure its MAC system to be more risk-based to achieve its strategic goals effectively and maintain its sustainability.

This research provides a fuller view of risk-based management controls based on the social, professional and political perspectives central to the examined institutional environment. Moreover, unlike early studies that reported resistance to RBC, this case reveals the institutional dynamics contributing to the successful implementation of RBC in an emerging market.

This paper addresses the growing fragmentation between traditional and digital service innovation (DSI) research and offers a unifying metatheoretical framework.

Grounded in service-dominant (S-D) logic's service ecosystems perspective, this study builds on an institutional and systemic, rather than product-centric and linear, conceptualization of value creation to offer a unifying framework for (digital) service innovation that applies to both physical and digital service provisions.

This paper questions the commonly perpetuated idea that DSI fundamentally changes the nature of innovation. Instead, it highlights resource liquification—the decoupling of information from the technologies that store, transmit, or process this information—as a distinguishing characteristic of DSI. Liquification, however, does not affect the relational and institutional nature of service innovation, which is always characterized by (1) the emergence of novel outcomes, (2) distributed governance and (3) symbiotic design. Instead, liquification makes these three characteristics more salient.

In presenting a cohesive service innovation framework, this study underscores that all innovation processes are rooted in combinatorial evolution. Here, service-providing actors (re)combine technologies (or more generally, institutions) to adapt their value cocreation practices. This research demonstrates that such (re)combinations exhibit emergence, distributed governance and symbiotic design. While these characteristics may initially seem novel and unique to DSI, it reveals that their fundamental mechanisms are not limited to digital service ecosystems. They are, in fact, integral to service innovation across virtual, physical and blended contexts. The study highlights the importance of exercising caution in assuming that the emergence of novel technologies, including digital technologies, necessitates a concurrent rethinking of the fundamental processes of service innovation.