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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.

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.

Institutions play a central role in service-dominant logic. However, the discussion regarding how institutional theory supports service-dominant logic advancements is still insufficient. This paper aims to contribute to a discussion on the multiple service-dominant logic approaches to institutions.

This conceptual paper presents the characterization of the existing streams in the broad institutional literature, highlighting the differences among those streams and elaborates on how one of the discussed streams – neo-institutionalism – is suitable to support service-dominant researchers in understanding the role of institutions in markets and value co-creation.

The paper shows that the three institutional perspectives presented are used indistinctly by service-dominant logic and a greater fit between the service-dominant logic and the neo-institutionalism stands out.

The paper proposes that service-dominant researchers should look at the neo-institutional stream as a particularly fertile ground for furthering their research.

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.

This article analyzes the cognitive microfoundations, conflicting institutional logics and professional hybridization in a case characterized by conflict.

In contrast to the majority of earlier studies focusing on special health care, the study was conducted in a Finnish basic health care organization. The empirical data include 36 interviews, accounting reports, budgets, newspaper articles and meeting notes collected 2013–2018.

The use of accounting techniques in this case did not offer professionals sufficient support under conditions of conflict. The authors suggest that this perceived lack of support intensified the negative emotions toward accounting techniques. These negative emotions aggregated into incompatible professional-level institutional logics, which contributed to the lack of hybridization between such logics. The authors highlight the importance of the cognitive microfoundations, that is, the individual-level interpretations and emotional responses, in the analysis of conflicting institutional logics.

Managerial attention needs to be directed to accounting practices perceived as frustrating or threatening, a perception that can prevent the use of accounting techniques in the creation of professional hybrids. The Finnish basic health care context involves inconsistent political decision-making, multiple tasks, three institutional logics and individual interpretations and emotions in various decision-making situations.

This study develops microfoundational accounting research by illustrating how individual-level cognitive microfoundations such as dissatisfaction with budgeting, aggregate into professional-level institutional logics, and in our case, prevent professional hybridization in a basic health care setting characterized by conflict and three separate institutional logics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how, and by whom, institutional logics are determined in the action of sustainable organisation. The authors analyse a supply chain network structure to understand how multiple stakeholders' perceptions of sustainability emerge into a dominant logic and diffuse across an organisational field.

Stakeholder network theory provides novel insights into emerging logics within a chocolate supply chain network. Semi-structured interviews with 35 decision-makers were analysed alongside 269 company documents to capture variations in emergent logics. The network was mapped to include 63 nodes and 366 edges to analyse power structure and mechanisms.

The socio-economic organising principles of sustainable organisation, their sources of power and their logics are identified. Economic and social logics are revealed, yet the dominance of economic logics creates risks to their coexistence. Logics are largely shaped in pre-competitive activities, and resource fitness to collaborative clusters limits access for non-commercial actors.

Powerful firms use network structures and collaborative and concurrent inter-organisational relationships to define and diffuse their conceptualisation of sustainability and restrict competing logics.

This novel study contributes to sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) through presenting the socio-economic logic as a new conceptual framework to understand the action of sustainable organisation. The identification of sophisticated mechanisms of power and hegemonic control in the network opens new research agendas.

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.

Using financial incentives has been criticised for putting too much focus on things that can be measured. Value-based reimbursement may better align professional values with financial incentives. However, professional values may differ between actor groups. In this article, the authors identify institutional logics within healthcare-providing organisations. Further, the authors analyse how the centrality and compatibility of the identified logics affect the institutionalisation of external demands.

41 semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives from healthcare providers within spine surgery in Sweden, where a value-based reimbursement programme was introduced. Data were analysed using thematic content analysis with an abductive approach, and a conceptual framework based on neo-institutional theory.

After the introduction of the value-based reimbursement programme, the centrality and compatibility of the institutional logics within healthcare-providing organisations changed. The logic of spine surgeons was dominating whereas physiotherapists struggled to motivate a higher cost for high quality physiotherapy. The institutional logic of nurses was aligned with spine surgeons, however as a peripheral logic facilitating spine surgery. To attain holistic and interdisciplinary healthcare, dominating institutional logics within healthcare-providing organisations need to allow peripheral institutional logics to attain a higher centrality for higher compatibility. Thus, allowing other occupations to take responsibility for quality and attain the feeling of professional pride.

Interviewing spine surgeons, physiotherapists, nurses, managers and administrators allows us to deepen the understanding of micro-level behaviour as a reaction (or lack thereof) to macro-level decisions.

Mobilizing a theoretical framework combining institutional logics and “imprinting” lenses, this paper provides an in-depth contextualized analysis of how historical imprints affect social and environmental reporting (SER) practices in Romania, a post-communist country in Eastern Europe.

The authors conduct a qualitative field study with a diverse dataset including regulations, publicly available reports and interviews with multiple actors involved in the SER field in Romania. The authors follow a reflexive approach in constructing the narratives by mobilizing their personal experience and understanding of the field to analyze the rich empirical material.

The authors identify a blend of logics that combine local and Western conceptualizations of business responsibilities and explain how the transition from a communist ideology to the free market economy affected SER practices in Romania. The authors also highlight four major imprints and document their longitudinal development, evidencing three main patterns: persistence, transformation and decay. The authors find that the deep connections that form between logics and imprints explain the cohabitation of logics rather than their straight replacement.

The paper contributes by evidencing the role of imprints' dynamics in the institutionalization of SER logics. The authors claim that the persistence (decay) of imprints from a former regime such as communism hinders (facilitates) the institutionalization of Western SER logics. Transformation instead has more uncertain effects. The pattern that an imprint takes hinges upon its usefulness for business interests.

Applying the institutional logics perspective to applicant attraction, this study investigates the level of uniformity among preferences for consulting job attributes associated with the institutional logics of the corporation, the profession and the family, and tests for the influence of anticipatory socialization differences.

The study uses a discrete choice experiment with 232 business students. A hierarchical Bayes approach to conjoint analysis uncovers part-worth heterogeneity and allows for subsequent cluster and regression analysis of the choice data.

The findings identify a dominant job-oriented preference type and a minor career-oriented preference type. Anticipatory socialization through personal prior work experience and the occupation of friends decreases adherence to the logic of profession and increases the relevance of the family logic. The parents' occupation has only a minimal influence on preferences.

The study provides attribute-based recommendations on how professional service firms can effectively address the complex expectations of potential applicants in their job ads for an entry position and underlines the role of intra-generational reference groups as important anticipatory socializers.

By testing individual socialization effects at the pre-hire stage and beyond the organizational level, the study fills a void in both the recruitment and the institutional literature.