scholarly journals Environmental Managers and Institutional Work: Reconciling Tensions of Competing Institutional Logics

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederik Dahlmann ◽  
Johanne Grosvold
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Change ◽  
Institutional Logics ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Institutional Work ◽  
Environmental Responsiveness ◽  
Repeated Interviews ◽  
Over Time

ABSTRACT:Firms face a variety of institutional logics and one important question is how individuals within firms manage these logics. Environmental managers in particular face tensions in reconciling their firms’ commercial fortunes with demands for greater environmental responsiveness. We explore how institutional work enables environmental managers to respond to competing institutional logics. Drawing on repeated interviews with 55 firms, we find that environmental managers face competition between a market-based logic and an emerging environmental logic. We show that some environmental managers embed the environmental logic alongside the market logic through variations of creation and disruption, thus over time creating institutional change, which can result in blended logics. Others, however, pursue a strategy of status quo or disengagement through maintenance or other forms of disruption, where the two logics coexist in principle but not in practice; instead the market logic retains its dominance. We discuss the implications of our findings for research.

Market legitimation in countercultural market change

2021 ◽  
pp. 147059312110560
Author(s):  
Hwanho Choi ◽  
Bernard Burnes
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Institutional Logics ◽  
Institutional Work ◽  
Market Change ◽  
Market Experience ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Indie Music ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Market Changes

Drawing on concepts of institutional work, legitimacy, and institutional logics, we investigate why countercultural markets experience institutional change and the actions institutional work market actors perform to inform institutional logics and ensure the legitimacy of countercultural markets. Although previous research suggests market changes and disruption, little attention has been paid to markets that originate from different institutional backgrounds, changes in the market experience in relation to its legitimization, and institutional work to attain legitimacy. The case of indie music in South Korea illustrates the evolution of a cultural market from the introduction of its ethos, the crisis caused by legitimacy pressures, and the transformation of the market. Using data gathered through in-depth interviews with indie labels and music consumers in South Korea, and archival sources, our research illuminates the source of market struggle and theorizes approaches that market actors perform to overcome the struggle.

Institutional logics and institutional work: radical reform of the Chinese public accounting profession in the 1990s

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 1019-1046 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Yee
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Change ◽  
Institutional Logics ◽  
Institutional Work ◽  
Accounting Profession ◽  
Public Accounting ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Radical Reform ◽  
Perspective Drawing ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Chinese Public

PurposeThis paper examines radical reform of the Chinese public accounting profession in the 1990s. In particular, the paper seeks to provide a more nuanced understanding of the sources, responses and processes of this radical institutional change that effectively paved the way for development of the Chinese accounting profession into the twenty-first century.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical data that inform this study come from both archival materials (mostly in Chinese) and in-depth interviews. These data are analysed and interpreted from a neo-institutionalist perspective, drawing, in particular, on the concept of institutional logics and the concept of institutional work.FindingsA state logic initially guided the development of the Chinese accounting profession but was seriously challenged in the 1990s following a series of high profile financial scandals. The findings reveal a shift to a new professional logic, which was made possible through multiple forms of institutional works instigated by various state actors.Originality/valueResearch into the radical reform of the Chinese public accounting profession in the 1990s was mostly quantitative in nature, focussing mainly on one reform programme, i.e. the disaffiliation of the accounting firms from their sponsoring agencies. This paper adopts a qualitative approach and is aimed at providing a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the institutional change process within its political and economic contexts.

scholarly journals Beyond ‘donor-recipient relations’? A historical-institutionalist perspective on recent efforts to modernise EU partnerships with third countries

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Niels Keijzer
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Change ◽  
Development Policy ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
The Status ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Eu

This paper presents a historical-institutionalist perspective on the EU’s current efforts to modernise its development policy and reform its various relationships with third countries. Applying concepts that endogenise institutional change, the analysis looks into the origin and basis of the policy and describes the various types of development partnership that the EU pursues with third countries. The paper subsequently analyses the 2007 Joint Africa-EU Strategy and the negotiations on EU-ACP post-2020, with a specific focus on how the development of these partnerships over time affects current EU efforts to seek to move beyond donor-recipient relations. It observes a gap between the reform-oriented discourse and the relative continuity in relationships over time, which serves to secure both the support of reform-oriented actors and those seeking to preserve the status quo. Repetition of this strategy over time combined with the need to launch new initiatives as well as changing circumstances affect this broad-based consensus and the legitimacy of the partnerships concerned.

Institutions and Organizations

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Theory ◽  
Organization Theory ◽  
Institutional Logics ◽  
Loose Coupling ◽  
Institutional Work ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Process Ontology ◽  
Process View ◽  
Process Perspective ◽  
Over Time

Institutions—the structures, practices, and meanings that define what people and organizations think, do, and aspire to—are created through process. They are “work in progress” that involves continual efforts to maintain, modify, or disturb them. Institutional logics are also in motion, holding varying degrees of dominance that change over time. This volume brings together two streams of thought within organization theory—institutional theory and process perspective—to advocate for stronger process ontology that highlights institutions as emergent, generative, political, and social. A stronger process view allows us to challenge our understanding of central concepts within institutional theory, such as “loose coupling,” “institutional work,” the work of institutional logics on the ground, and institutionalization between diffusion and translation. Enriched with an emphasis on practice and widened by taking a broad view of institutions, this volume draws on the Ninth International Symposium on Process Organization Studies to offer key insights that will inform our thinking of institutions as processes.

scholarly journals When a Ban Is Not a Ban: Institutional Work and the Russian Doping Scandal

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Mathew Dowling ◽  
Spencer Harris ◽  
Marvin Washington
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Change ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
Institutional Work ◽  
Institutional Perspective ◽  
Institutional Infrastructure ◽  
The Status ◽  
Key Events ◽  
International Sport

There are fewer cases of such blatant acts to defy and subsequent heroic efforts to rearrange institutional norms than the Russian doping scandal. In adopting a neo-institutional perspective, the authors theorize the scandal as a case of attempted but failed institutional disruption. More specifically, the authors draw upon the institutional change literature and the institutional work perspective to explain the key events surrounding actors’ response to the scandal. The analysis utilized Gioia’s methodological approach to examine secondary empirical data. Findings reveal how stakeholders circumvented traditional governance structures in an attempt to disrupt institutional arrangements, but despite this, much of the preexisting institutional infrastructure has remained intact. The authors explain this outcome, in part, as a consequence of the counter-institutional work of key governing agencies and other actors to maintain the status quo within international sport.

The Stabilization Process Then and Now

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Epstein
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Stabilization Process ◽  
The Third ◽  
Stabilization Phase ◽  
Over Time

This chapter shifts the focus to the third and final stabilization phase of the political communication cycle (PCC). During the stabilization phase, a new political communication order (PCO) takes shape through the building of norms, institutions, and regulations that serve to fix the newly established status quo in place. This status quo occurs when formerly innovative political communication activities become mundane, yet remain powerful. Much of the chapter details the pattern of communication regulation and institution construction over time. In particular, this chapter explores the instructive similarities and key differences between the regulation of radio and the internet, which offers important perspectives on the significance of our current place in the PCC and the consequences of choices that will be made over the next few years.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Telesca Giuseppe
Keyword(s):  
Structural Analysis ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
The Past ◽  
Final Goal ◽  
Social Structural ◽  
Country Analysis ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
Over Time

The ambition of this book is to combine different bodies of scholarship that in the past have been interested in (1) providing social/structural analysis of financial elites, (2) measuring their influence, or (3) exploring their degree of persistence/circulation. The final goal of the volume is to investigate the adjustment of financial elites to institutional change, and to assess financial elites’ contribution to institutional change. To reach this goal, the nine chapters of the book introduced here look at financial elites’ role in different European societies and markets over time, and provide historical comparisons and country and cross-country analysis of their adaptation and contribution to the transformation of the national and international regulatory/cultural context in the wake of a crisis or in a longer term perspective.

In or Out?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine E. De Vries
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Alternative State ◽  
Empirical Measurement ◽  
The Status ◽  
People’S Attitudes ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Eu

This chapter introduces a benchmark theory of public opinion towards European integration. Rather than relying on generic labels like support or scepticism, the chapter suggests that public opinion towards the EU is both multidimensional and multilevel in nature. People’s attitudes towards Europe are essentially based on a comparison between the benefits of the status quo of membership and those associated with an alternative state, namely one’s country being outside the EU. This comparison is coined the ‘EU differential’. When comparing these benefits, people rely on both their evaluations of the outcomes (policy evaluations) and the system that produces them (regime evaluations). This chapter presents a fine-grained conceptualization of what it means to be an EU supporter or Eurosceptic; it also designs a careful empirical measurement strategy to capture variation, both cross-nationally and over time. The chapter cross-validates these measures against a variety of existing and newly developed data sources.

Understanding Mechanics of Smooth Institutional Transformation

2018 ◽  
pp. 49-82
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Change ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Institutional Transformation ◽  
Institutional Entrepreneurship ◽  
Institutional Work ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Third

Institutions, similar to other human and social undertakings, emerge and evolve following different social dynamics. The third chapter aims to discover some of the mechanisms behind smooth institutional transformations and the main elements and characteristics of institutional change. The first part makes an overview of the neo-institutional schools and their considerations for institutional change. The second part defines the basic elements of institutional change, including the analysis of exogenous and endogenous processes and characteristics. The third part outlines the agency view of institutional change and proposes an analysis of theoretical concepts of institutional entrepreneurship, institutional work and proto-institutions, the types, processes, and stages of institutional transformation. Based on that, in the discussion part, there is presented a model defining how new technology can affect institutional change combining micro and macro perspective and social actors. Finally, there are analyzed the main criteria for successful transformation of the institutionalization process.

The EU Delegation Sarajevo as an Organisational Proxy of the EU’s Administrative Co-governance

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 252-278
Author(s):  
Matej Navrátil
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
International System ◽  
Institutional Logics ◽  
Common Interest ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
The European Union ◽  
State Actor ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Eu

Summary This article argues that by using the European Union Delegation (EUD) in Sarajevo as an organisational proxy, the EU creates tools allowing it to participate in the enhancement of external administrative co-governance in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Inspired by the organisation theory approach, this article conceives of the EUD Sarajevo as a hybrid organisation. Such organisations are defined as a product of a combination of two sovereign organisations pursuing a common interest. They recombine multiple institutional logics, stimulate institutional change and spark innovative practices. The conceptualisation of the EUD Sarajevo as a hybrid organisation offers analytical insight for understanding the EU’s role in the society of states and allows us to theorise more concretely about the impact that a non-state actor has on the transformation of the institutions of diplomacy and sovereignty, which are foundational institutions of the international system of states.

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