Towards a flatter ontology of institutional logics: How logics relate in situations of institutional complexity

The institutional logics approach is a powerful lens with which to examine and understand contexts in which norms and conceptions are multiple, unclear or in flux. While logics at the societal level have been well elaborated and are, in the most part, widely understood and accepted, at the field level logics are not necessarily so clear. Field frames distort, merge and confuse the societal logic as field actors negotiate, rebalance, bridge and interpret logics in a recursively constitutive process. We review research in two institutionally complex fields—higher education and healthcare - that employs an institutional logics lens. We identify and categorize institutional logics arising in these two fields and ask how these field-level logics relate to each other and to societal-level ideal-type logics. We ask what roles ideologies play in mediating relations between the field-level logics and what are the mechanisms by which this happens. We find that, at the field level, societal logics can appear as field-level instantiations or merge to form hybrids. New field-level logics can also emerge, but often these are confused with ideologies, thus limiting the theory-building potential of the institutional logics approach. We identify and begin to resolve confusion between logics and ideologies, highlighting the role of ideologies in mediating the relationships between logics at the field level. We advocate for, and pave the way towards, a new research agenda enabled by a flatter ontology of institutional logics that sees a horizontal relationship between logics as well as a vertical relationship between logics and actors.     

Following unique logics despite institutional complexity: An inductive study of academic inventors and institutional logics

This paper examines how institutional complexity, due to the availability of multiple logics, influences the behavior of academic inventors during an innovation process. Based on four case studies of medical technology innovations, this paper identifies three logics influencing academic inventors’ behavior: academic, market, and care logics. We identify several patterns that characterize the practices of academic inventors in a context with multiple institutional logics. Despite the availability of multiple logics, we observe a strong pattern of academic inventors predominantly following the market or the care logic. As for the influence of multiple logics, we find very limited interaction between logics (i.e., reinforcing, complementary and conflicting interaction), with the prevalent pattern being “no interaction” between institutional logics. Thus, instead of following several logics, academic inventors’ specific practices are mostly guided by a “unique” logic. This influence of logics leads to a clear pattern of “dominant” influence on behavior, reflected in individual strategies of “entrenching,” that is, a strategy based on building one’s behavior on a “unique” logic. However, the same available logics can also generate "aligned" influence, entailing behavior guided by several logics. But this occurs only if the academic inventor faces uncertainty regarding the exploitation of the intellectual property. With these findings, we add to the ongoing discussion concerning institutional complexity and individual behavior by elucidating in detail how institutional complexity can entail behavior guided by “unique” logics.     

基于制度逻辑视角的中国工会改革路径分析研究

立足中国工会改革实践,通过采集1949~2020年间《人民日报》的工会新闻报道和相关期刊文献,采用扎根理论方法提炼出中国工会的制度逻辑构成,并从制度逻辑的互动和演化来剖析中国工会改革过程中的本土特征和内在运行规律。研究结果发现:中国工会具有社会治理逻辑、员工服务逻辑和企业管理逻辑三重逻辑,且其在目标导向、行动基础、合法性和人性假设上存在差异;社会治理逻辑、员工服务逻辑和企业管理逻辑贯穿中国工会改革的全过程,共同推动工会改革历经社会治理逻辑的主导→社会治理逻辑与员工服务逻辑的竞争→三重制度逻辑的平衡融合3个阶段,且呈现出复杂性、动态性的演化特征;中国工会的组织结构和管理体系存在制度惯性的约束,导致其内部逻辑的演变始终滞后于外部制度环境变化。     

Organizational Responses to Contending Institutional Logics: The Moderating Effect of Group Dynamics

This paper advances knowledge on how the forms of institutional logics that emerge and become venerated among members of a singular organization in a heterogeneous field are influenced by struggles between contending interest groups. It examines the moderating effect of group dynamics that occur when an organization attempts to balance novel institutional complexity within organizational bounds through its hiring and promotion systems. The authors argue that, while the specific institutional oppositions of heterogeneous fields compel organizational changes, the institutional forms that emerge and become legitimate among members of an organization in such fields are the effects of indeterminate social processes of regularization and breaking of coexisting logics. The paper provides insights into how the negotiations among groups of organizational actors over the process and outcome of institutional change are influenced by asymmetric power relationships yet significantly mediated by their social strategies. The findings reported are from an ethnography of the enactment of institutional changes at a South Korean credit card company following the economic crisis in 1997 and the International Monetary Fund bailout programme.     

Beyond the purely commercial business model: Organizational value logics and the heterogeneity of sustainability business models

The business model has been conceived as a commercial logic of value proposition, creation, exchange and capture. However, its underlying conceptual structure of an organizational value logic holds promise also for application beyond a purely commercial context, for partially commercial and even noncommercial organizations. This paper unlocks this potential by conceptualizing homogeneous and heterogeneous organizational value logics shaped by a variety of institutional logics. Homogeneous value logics are dominantly shaped by individual institutional logics, such as the value logic of businesses shaped by an institutional logic of the commercial market, or that of a churches shaped by an institutional logic of religion. Heterogeneous value logics, however, are co-shaped by two or more institutional logics. The application of these concepts is exemplified in the context of sustainability business models, which are built on a heterogeneous value logic that combines elements from commercial, sustainability, welfare and government logics. The paper contributes to the business model discussion by extending it to partially commercial and noncommercial organizations; by creating a conceptual space between value logics and institutional logics; and by proposing the meta-logic of value proposition, creation, exchange and capture, a novel analytical tool for the study of organizations shaped by plural institutional logics.     

Institutional Shifts In Inter-Municipal Service Delivery

Comparative research on inter-municipal cooperation in eight European countries shows that there is a great variety of institutional arrangements for cooperation across the different countries. Also, these arrangements tend to change over time in terms of the scope of cooperation among partners, their composition and the degree of organizational integration. This article describes and analyzes the variety of and shifts in institutional arrangements for a specific class of inter-municipal cooperation arrangements: those that are set up to provide for the joint delivery of public services. It is argued that specific arrangements are typically the outcomes of interaction between national institutional contexts, environmental factors and local preferences.     

“We have performance appraisal every day and every hour”: Transferring performance management to Russia

Performance management (PM) of employees is an important established practice in multinational corporations (MNC) and therefore one of the key practices to be transferred to subsidiaries. In this study, we use the concept of institutional logics to show how Russian employees experience PM practices that are based on the institutional logic of a Finnish MNC which is contradictory to the one prevailing in Russia where the subsidiaries operate. Our findings contribute to the practice transfer and PM literature by showing how the Russian subsidiaries responded to competing institutional logics by consciously selecting certain elements from each logic, demonstrating “institutional bricolage”, to address both the headquarter's (HQ) requirements and the fast pace of change and uncertainties in an emerging post-Soviet market. Our study also enhances the international business (IB) literature by using the concept of institutional logics in IB and international management (IM) research, where it has been infrequently used.     

Three's a Crowd: The Role of Inter‐logic Relationships in Highly Complex Institutional Fields

Institutional complexity is increasingly seen in terms of potential schisms between logics in pluralist fields. However, research into complexity is mostly confined to binary institutional logics that oversimplify settings where more logics interact. The reorganized mental health service we studied brought a range of expert groups together in a highly complex institutional field. Three logics were seen to be continually in play: a health logic based on expert medical values, a care logic of holistic values, and a logic of integration based partly on managerial priorities but also shared more broadly. The paper identifies how the pattern of conflicting and reinforcing inter‐logic relations that underpinned this field was constituted and further explores a number of critical implications for complexity theory.     

Improvising Prescription: Evidence from the Emergency Room

Global medical practice is increasingly standardizing through evidence‐based approaches and quality certification procedures. Despite this increasing standardization, medical work in emergency units necessarily involves sensitivity to the individual, the particular and the unexpected. While much medical practice is routine, important improvisational elements remain significant. Standardization and improvisation can be seen as two conflicting logics. However, they are not incompatible, although the occurrence of improvisation in highly structured and institutionally complex environments remains underexplored. The study presents the process of improvisation in the tightly controlled work environment of the emergency room. The authors conducted an in situ ethnographic observation of an emergency unit. An inductive approach shows professionals combining ostensive compliance with protocols with necessary and occasional ‘underlife’ improvisations. The duality of improvisation as simultaneously present and absent is related to pressures in the institutional domain as well as to practical needs emerging from the operational realm. The intense presence of procedures and work processes enables flexible improvised performances that paradoxically end up reinforcing institutional pressures for standardization.     

Host country corruption and MNE location choice: The view of institutional pluralism

Whether to invest in a corrupt host country is an important decision for MNEs. Although scholars have investigated the contingent impacts of the institutional characteristics of the MNE parent's home country, extant research concentrates on examining the country-level contingent impact. It neglects the institutional pluralism view that MNEs could face different institutional logics through firm-level channels in their home country, which influences their decision to enter a corrupt host country. Employing the unique dataset of 42,126 Japanese MNE-host country-year pairs, this study finds that MNEs are discouraged from investing in corrupt host countries when they have greater foreign ownership or a higher ratio of independent board members because they face shareholder-oriented institutional logic in the home country. Such an effect is mitigated when MNEs are embedded in cross-equity holdings, as they face stakeholder-oriented logic.     

Alternative Logics Coexistence: the Supplementary Health Field in Brazil

The paper examined the conditions that allow alternative logics a long standing coexistence, when no one logic predominates in the supplementary health field in Brazil. It contributes to the literature bringing the analysis of the coexistence over several decades of the following competitive logics - professional, public, market, regulatory, and social protection logic, in an institutional order level, while medical groups, insurance companies, and cooperatives established alternative health provision logics in the market level. The state’s incapacity or unwillingness to alienate the private sector is the main reason for the emergence of the various market medical providers with their distinct forms of service delivery.     

Processing Institutional Change in Public Service Provision

With the proliferation of New Public Management (NPM) worldwide, public service providing agencies are increasingly expected to operate in a business-like manner and exposed to ‘competing institutional logics’. Exploring the German hospital sector, this article shows that this is processed within two areas of collective action simultaneously: at enterprise-level and at the regulatory infrastructure of the organizational field. In both places, ‘institutional work’ takes place, albeit differently. With emerging tensions, trial-and-error strategies (deployed by individual hospitals) and mitigating (regulatory) measures engender a nervous cohabitation of the two logics, endangering potentially the sector’s public mission in the long term.     

Code Breaking: How Entrepreneurs Exploit Cultural Logics to Generate Institutional Change

If institutions are durable, how do they change from within and from without? We build on the emerging synthesis of social movement theory and institutional theory and articulate how institutional entrepreneurs from within and without deploy pre-existing cultural logics to push forward their institutional projects. We develop propositions, which show how the success of these framing activities is contingent on political opportunity, and illustrate them with a wide range of extreme cases.     

Constructing Co-governance between Government and Civil Society: An Institutional Approach to Collaboration

The aim of this paper is to analyze how civil society organizations (CSOs) collaborate with both developed and developing governments in Asia through institutional processes. It argues that in developed countries, institutional arrangements have a positive impact on collaboration. Favourable administrative governance can create collaboration between governments and CSOs. This paper reports on 3,944 studies of CSOs from 2004 to 2009 in Tokyo, Seoul, Manila, and Dhaka. CSOs in Tokyo have better combined collaborative and institutional processes than those in the other three cities. Governance in Seoul is more polarized than in the other cities, and in both Manila and Dhaka, despite there being a high degree of institutionalized relations between CSOs and the government, their collaboration is low. This research also finds that intermediary institutions between governments and CSOs play a role in co-governance.     

The influence of national culture and institutional voids on family ownership of large firms: A country level empirical study

There is considerable variation across countries in both the extent to which large publicly listed firms are family-owned and the dominance of such family-owned firms in stock markets. The literature presents competing theoretical viewpoints on what influences such country-level variation. On one hand, institutional economists suggest that institutional voids can have a strong influence. On the other hand, cultural sociologists suggest that a country's culture can have a strong influence. One type of institutional void is a lack of institutional norms and regulations needed for monitoring contracts (which can discourage owners from hiring professional agents for top management positions in their firms) and another type of institutional void is a lack of financial credit availability in the country. Cultural dimensions include collectivism (i.e. cohesion within in-groups/families) and power distance (i.e. inequalities in society). This country-level empirical study suggests that both national culture and institutional voids influence family ownership patterns around the world, and that institutional voids moderate the influence of national culture. National culture has a stronger influence when a country has institutional voids; however, the influence of national culture weakens when institutional voids are overcome.     

Social Enterprises as Hybrid Organizations: A Review and Research Agenda

The impacts of the global economic crisis of 2008, the intractable problems of persistent poverty and environmental change have focused attention on organizations that combine enterprise with an embedded social purpose. Scholarly interest in social enterprise (SE) has progressed beyond the early focus on definitions and context to investigate their management and performance. From a review of the SE literature, the authors identify hybridity, the pursuit of the dual mission of financial sustainability and social purpose, as the defining characteristic of SEs. They assess the impact of hybridity on the management of the SE mission, financial resource acquisition and human resource mobilization, and present a framework for understanding the tensions and trade‐offs resulting from hybridity. By examining the influence of dual mission and conflicting institutional logics on SE management the authors suggest future research directions for theory development for SE and hybrid organizations more generally.     

家族企业的对外直接投资与职业化管理

基于制度同构理论,探究家族企业通过对外直接投资嵌入到国内和国外互不兼容、甚至相互冲突的制度逻辑时对其治理结构的影响,提出对外直接投资给家族企业带来制度同构压力,进而影响其职业化管理水平。运用中国沪深上市家族企业2005~2019年的面板数据,研究发现:家族企业对外直接投资的规模和广度越大,高管团队的职业化水平越高;东道国与母国之间的制度距离会增强家族企业对外直接投资对职业化管理的促进作用;企业所在地区的外商投资水平则会削弱家族企业在对外直接投资中提升职业化管理的动力。通过研究组织同时嵌入不同制度逻辑时对治理结构的影响,深化制度同构行为的分析框架,对家族企业的国际化成长和治理转型具有实践意义。     

Territorial Politics,Devolution and Spatial Planning in the UK: Results,Prospects, Lessons

This article critically analyses the debates which have unfolded in the aftermath of the Scottish independence referendum of 18 September 2014 concerning the constitutional arrangements of the UK as a plurinational state and the internal governmental structure of England. The debates unfolding in the UK reflect and illustrate two central themes in planning, territorial development and public policy. First, they highlight the contested distribution of power across multiple layers of government in states with an inherited centralized pattern of governance that are now facing strengthening regionalist and nationalist claims. Second, they illustrate the linked growth in the demand for new governance and strategic planning arrangements in large metropolitan areas with fragmented administrative and institutional boundaries. The article first discusses what the outcome of the Scottish referendum (and its aftermath) means for planning in Scotland. It then turns to the debates on devolution in the rest of UK which were stoked in the wake of the referendum, looking at the planning implications of further devolution in Northern Ireland and Wales, and at the possible consequences of the various options currently being aired to solve the ‘English question’. Finally, ongoing debates on decentralization to regions and city-regions in England are briefly considered.     

制度环境、公司治理对企业竞争优势的影响研究——基于中国上市公司的经验证据

如何通过外部制度和内部制度的安排延续企业的竞争优势,是制度变迁背景下中国企业面临的核心问题.本文以2002年-2005年的中国上市公司为样本,基于国内地区差距,实证分析了制度环境和公司治理时企业竞争优势的影响.回归结果发现,政府支持市场化程度、经济法律环境水平、股权集中度、股权竞争度、董事会独立性、专业委员会设置程度以及股东参与决策程度与企业竞争优势显著正相关.研究结果表明,好的制度环境与有效的公司治理能提高企业的竞争优势;企业持续竞争优势的源泉应包含以政府为主体的宏观层次的制度竞争和以企业为主体的微观层次的公司治理竞争.     

State versus Market: Contending Interests in the Struggle to Control French Accounting Standardisation

The paper concerns the struggle between different interest groups to control or significantly influence the objectives, institutional arrangements and processes of French accounting standardisation. Its particular focus of interest is the state agency established to deal with standardisation, namely the National Accounting Council, the Conseil National de la Comptabilité (CNC), and its predecessors. The period addressed spans from 1941 to the present, marked by the first attempt to implement a national accounting code, adoption of the initial post-war code in 1947 and subsequent revisions.The paper identifies and examines the role played by the French state in establishing an institutional structure for accounting standardisation and in seeking to influence operation of that structure as a means to achieve a concertation of diverse social and economic interest groups with an interest in accounting standards. The objective for the process from the viewpoint of the state has been seen as the intended dominance of certain interests of state over other interests, whether public sector or otherwise. In the course of time, the dominant interests of the state have changed in the face of changing expectations about the role of financial accounting and reporting in the financial life of France. The role of the state is seen to have come under increasing pressure from private sector interests in France and externally. Particular attention is given to the 1996–8 major reforms to the CNC and associated new regulatory structure.The possibility is assessed of whether and under what terms the French approach to accounting standardisation can be sustained, grounded as it is in a profound attachment by the state to the values of the Etat colbertiste.