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Institutional pluralism is an intriguing phenomenon for institutional scholars. How the balance among logics evolves within a field and what kind of trajectories a set of logics may experience over a long-term period remain unclear. In particular, extant literature tends too often to downplay institutional complexity by focusing on two dominant logics, and to ignore modes of interaction among logics other than competition. In order to address these issues, we offer a novel methodology for measuring institutional complexity – multiple institutional logics and their change. In particular, we highlight the utility of descendent hierarchical classification models, and demonstrate their relevance by analyzing articles published in a leading French trade journal over more than 100 years to study logics related to workplace in the construction industry. We identify a pool of six field-structuring logics over a period of one century; they reveal the composite nature of such logics, which we characterize as combining several higher institutional orders. Additionally, our results bring to light new mechanisms that can explain the composition of institutional logics.

Institutional pluralism is an intriguing phenomenon for institutional scholars. How the balance among logics evolves within a field and what kind of trajectories a set of logics may experience over a long-term period remain unclear. In particular, extant literature tends too often to downplay institutional complexity by focusing on two dominant logics, and to ignore modes of interaction among logics other than competition. In order to address these issues, we offer a novel methodology for measuring institutional complexity – multiple institutional logics and their change. In particular, we highlight the utility of descendent hierarchical classification models, and demonstrate their relevance by analyzing articles published in a leading French trade journal over more than 100 years to study logics related to workplace in the construction industry. We identify a pool of six field-structuring logics over a period of one century; they reveal the composite nature of such logics, which we characterize as combining several higher institutional orders. Additionally, our results bring to light new mechanisms that can explain the composition of institutional logics.

The purpose of our article is to contribute to the further understanding of individual responses to pluralism, by studying in particular the role played by critiques and compromises in the formulation of such responses. Drawing on theoretical insights from the sociology of conventions, we look at the various modes of justification publicly advanced by French co-operators when engaging with co-operative principles. Our analysis allows us to identify three main instantiations, that is situated and flexible enactments, of these principles: pragmatic, reformist, and political. Our contribution to the understanding of pluralism and its instantiations by organizational members is threefold. First, in contrast with studies drawing on an institutional-logics perspective, our study shows that individual instantiations of pluralism rely not only on positive affirmations of logics but also on critical mobilizations of competing logics. Second, our study shows that pluralism can be understood not only as co-existing multiple logics, but also as different possible instantiations of the same logic, the ambiguity of which allows compromises to be settled with other logics. Third, we suggest that organizational members’ responses to pluralism often involve more than two logics, which are combined into a complex set of interdependent judgments. In addition, in relation to co-operative studies, our proposed typology provides a mapping that usefully extends the range of possibilities found in co-operators’ instantiations of co-operative principles, thus furthering our understanding of the diversity of the co-operative movement.

This double volume presents state-of-the-art research and thinking on the dynamics of actors and institutional logics. In the introduction, we briefly sketch the roots and branches of institutional logics scholarship before turning to the new buds of research on the topic of how actors engage institutional logics in the course of their organizational practice. We introduce an exciting line of new works on the meta-theoretical foundations of logics, institutional logic processes, and institutional complexity and organizational responses. Collectively, the papers in this volume advance the very prolific stream of research on institutional logics by deepening our insight into the active use of institutional logics in organizational action and interaction, including the institutional effects of such (inter)actions.

Adopting an agentic positioning, we question and compare competing logics hybridization within French hospitals and universities facing major reforms inspired by new public management. In addition to the resulting forms of hybridization exposed in the literature (accepted or refused), we observe four additional modes: instrumentalized, uncomfortable, reformulated, and suffered. They all reveal the varied manner with which each professional faces reform. However, we develop a new argument: the ways professionals hybridize (or do not) their prevailing logic depends on an overarching mode of hybridization that characterizes the way their organization deals with reform. We identify two contrasting modes: overarching strategic logics hybridization and overarching enforced logics hybridization. They give insight into how actors decouple structure from practices. We contribute to the literature on logics hybridization by first analyzing the role of specific actors who act as either a translator-actor or a closure-actor to respectively facilitate appropriation of the reforms or to protect professionals against the growing dominance of the new logic introduced by the law; and secondly by discussing importance of articulating higher and lower organizational levels all involved in hybridization.

This paper presents a new mixed methods approach which allows researchers to scan industry sectors for institutional change periods and to locate periods of significant institutional change agency.

The approach is grounded on the institutional logics perspective and on institutional entrepreneurship theory and combines an automated quantitative content analysis with a cognitive mapping exercise.

The paper describes the development of this approach and its application to the urban water management sector of Australia. Three periods of significant institutional change agency are identified, described and discussed.

The paper puts forward a new methodological approach that enables a robust and objective identification of actor-driven institutional change periods which can be used as a precursor for more targeted qualitative inquiries into institutional change research.

Purpose – In the last decades, Italian healthcare organisations have been subject to important normative changes, aimed at increasing their efficiency. As a response, performance measurement and evaluation (PME) systems have been introduced. The present study attempts to examine PME system changes as institutional processes. In studying such processes the healthcare literature acknowledges the presence of two logics: managerial and professional, as peculiar to healthcare settings, whose convergence or divergence can explain the success of any institutional process.

Design/methodology/approach – We adopt Busco et al.'s (2007) framework as an approach for unbundling PME system change into four relevant coordinates, namely: (1) the object (PME system), (2) the subjects (institutional forces), (3) the place and time of change (the managerial and professional logics) and (4) the how and why change happens (change as an institutional process). We conducted a longitudinal case study at a large teaching hospital in Southern Italy, directed to interpret PME system changes during the period from 1998 until 2009.

Findings – Our observation distinguishes episodes of successful institutional processes, where the introduced innovations are transformed into objectivated practices, from episodes of missed institutionalisation, where new procedures were rapidly abandoned.

Research and social implications – This theoretical framework can be useful for interpreting the PME system changes in different institutional contexts.

Originality – The Busco et al.'s framework allows us to understand PME system changes by integrating the perspectives from Neo-Institutional Sociology, representing healthcare organisational responses to external institutional pressures, and Old-Institutional Economics, conceptualising PME system changes as an institutionalisation process.

Institutional complexity shapes what is perceived as possible by framing cultural debates about practices, but organizations in turn shape how logics interpenetrate fields, suggesting that we must consider both the degree of compatibility between logics and the degree of practice variation in a field. Our exploratory study of three entrepreneurial impact finance organizations considers how they situate their practices between the market and community logics. We offer a recursive view that considers how multiple institutional logics shape practices and how entrepreneurial organizations adapt and invent new practices that, through their continued use, can influence the institutional complexity of a field.

This study investigates in depth how decision-making of different organisational members is shaped by various management control systems (MCSs) that reflect different institutional logics, how the entire organisation deals with the arising institutional complexity and which role different management controls as a system play in such situations.

A case study was conducted on a German Mittelstand firm whose MCSs were shaped by three different logics over time: a family logic, a stakeholder logic and a shareholder logic.

This paper shows how different actors of an organisation confronted with institutional complexity used selective coupling of different MCS components and compartmentalizing MCS components to deal with clashing institutional logics. Thereby, it was possible for the actors to balance different sub-communities within the firm that were shaped by conflicting but yet complementary logics that were required for organisational survival.

This study contributes to the understanding of how an MCS can be exploited for organisational structural responses to multiple logics. Due to this research design, the present study deals with challenges of ex post rationalization.

The results show options for organisational leaders to deal with different kind of worldviews (i.e. logics) that shape employees’ behaviour. Particularly, this paper explains how leaders can restructure their MCSs to influence human behaviour in times of radical change.

This paper contributes to the literature on MCSs by showing what role MCSs play in structural responses to institutional complexity.

A Swedish framework law has enabled integration between public agencies in vocational rehabilitation. With the support of this law, coordination associations can be formed to fund and organize joint activities. The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze how the law has been interpreted and translated into local coordination associations and how local institutional logics have developed to guide the organization of these associations.

Data was collected through observations of meetings within two coordination associations and supplemented with documents. The material was analyzed by compilation and examination of data from field notes, whereupon the most important aspects were crystallized and framed with institutional organization theory.

Two different translations of the law were seen in the associations studied: the association as an independent actor, and as an arena for its member organizations. Two subsequent institutional logics have developed, influencing decisions on autonomy, objectives and rationality for initiating and organizing in the two associations and their activities. The institutional logics are circular, further enhancing the different translations creating different forms of integration.

Both forms of integration are legitimate, but the different translations have created integration with different degrees of autonomy in relation to the member organizations. Only a long‐term analysis can show whether one form of integration is more functional than the other.

This article is based on an extensive material providing insights into a form of interorganizational integration which has been scarcely researched. The findings show how different translations can influence the integration of welfare services.