The case for an inhabited institutionalism in organizational research: interaction,coupling, and change reconsidered

This paper makes the case for an inhabited institutionalism by pondering questions that continue to vex institutional theory: How can we account for local activity, agency, and change without reverting to a focus on individual actors—the very kinds of actors that institutional theory was designed to critique? How is change possible in an institutional context that constructs interests and sets the very conditions for such action? Efforts to deal with these questions by inserting various forms of individual, purposive actors into institutional frameworks have created inconsistencies that threaten the overall coherence of institutional theory and move it farther from its sociological roots. To provide alternative answers, we turn to the growing line of work on “inhabited” institutions. Our exegesis of this literature has two goals. The first goal is to shift focus away from individuals and nested imagery and towards social interaction and coupling configurations. This move opens new avenues for research and helps to identify the spaces—both conceptual and empirical—and the supra-individual processes that facilitate change. This shift has important theoretical implications: incorporating social interaction alters institutional theory, and our second goal is to specify an analytic framework for this new research, an inhabited institutionalism. Inhabited institutionalism is a meso-approach for examining the recursive relationships among institutions, interactions, and organizations. It provides novel and sociologically consistent means for dealing with issues of agency and change, and a new agenda for research that can reinvigorate and reunite organizational sociology and institutional theory.

     

Teacher Careers and Inhabited Institutions: Sense‐Making and Arsenals of Teaching Practice in Educational Institutions

This article advances emerging scholarship that emphasizes the benefits to new institutional theories of organizational functioning offered by empirical research rooted in the tradition of symbolic interactionism. I present evidence from in‐depth interviews with teachers from three high schools to show how individuals' perspectives about pursuing institutional goals are filtered through their accumulated experience working within those institutions. Findings show teachers develop what I call “arsenals of teaching practice” as they accumulate work experience, and this process creates a key source of difference by career stage among teachers that shapes their instructional decisions. I discuss implications for understanding the relationship between policy and practice, and extend existing theory of inhabited institutions by identifying a key way that people's sense‐making through experience drives institutional functioning.     

The Challenge of Activist Coalition Governance: Accommodating Diversity to Create Institutions—An Approach Via the Inter-Relationships Between Action,Project and Instrument

This paper addresses the governance of hybrid forms of organisation arising in new social movements, characterised by diverse institutional logics and democratic decision making. Our theoretical framework encompasses the governance theory of Kooiman with insights from new developments in institutional theory. This framework allows us to examine governance as the capacity to link together disparate institutions from the perspective of interactions between action, project and instrument, and to explore the institutional work that results from these interactions. By studying a French activist coalition, we explore the micro-processes that make it possible to accommodate diversity in an organisation intended to produce solid institutions. Our results show that the three elements of governance—action, project and instrument—have an impact on the cohesion of diversity-based organisations and on building and consolidating institutions. When these elements are flexible and versatile enough, and when they mutually nurture each other, a plurality of logics is possible, the coalition goes forward, and true institutional work can be accomplished. When one of these elements of governance—instruments in particular—becomes autonomous and rigid, diversity is more difficult to achieve and one logic is likely to prevail over the others, compromising the very survival of the coalition and impeding the emergence of a new institution.     

CORRUPTION,PRODUCT MARKET COMPETITION,AND INSTITUTIONAL QUALITY: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM THE U.S. STATES

This article argues that the effect of corruption on competition is dependent on the institutional environment. When institutions are relatively efficient, observed corruption is likely to be associated with relatively less competition. Conversely, in areas with low quality institutions (e.g., excessively burdensome regulations), corruption may lead to relatively more competition. I employ unique data on competition, corruption, and institutional quality across U.S. states from 1997 to 2009 and report that a higher level of corruption is associated with relatively more competition in states with low levels of institutional quality. However, as institutional quality improves, the effect of corruption worsens. Thus, institutional quality is a fundamental determinant of the corruption‐competition relationship. Improving institutional quality, while at the same time reducing corruption, will increase competition and likely improve economic outcomes. (JEL D73, O17, L26)     

Spill‐Up and Spill‐Over of Trust: An Extended Test of Cultural and Institutional Theories of Trust in South Korea1

In comparison to the heated debate over the origins of trust in political institutions, few studies have empirically examined the linkage between trust in political and nonpolitical institutions at the individual level. In this study, we utilize a two‐step methodology to investigate attitudes toward the government in the broader context of attitudes toward related nonpolitical institutions in South Korea. Results from latent class analysis reveal that political trust is an integrated part of a more general set of attitudes toward social and economic institutions. In addition, results from multinomial logistic regression analysis corroborate past studies that found a positive relationship between perceptions of institutional performance and trust in institutions while partially supporting theories advocating the importance of interpersonal trust for institutional trust. This study points to the possibility of interpersonal trust “spilling up” to trust in institutions and the likelihood that trust in one institution “spills over” to trust in other related institutions.     

More than just a product: Strengthening literature in sociological analysis

Contemporary sociology of literature is predominantly shaped by the research of literary production, which approaches literary works as black boxes and subordinates them to social interactions and institutions. Even sociologists who recognize usefulness of literature for its inner quality often look at literary texts as mere passive objects to be translated into sociological discourse. In proposing a new sociology of literature, I first briefly outline the history of sociological studies of literature; second, I introduce “the state of the art” in the sociology of literature; third, I explore the relationship between sociology and literature in more general terms; and lastly, I discuss approaches and ideas with the potential to become components of a new research program, which would be a powerful alternative to the mainstream paradigms in sociological studies of literature. Such a program would make it clear that sociology can greatly benefit from cooperation with literature when sociologists are sensitive to the subtleties and (especially aesthetic) specificities of literary works.     

Corporate social advocacy or social issues management? Examining state flagship universities’ responses to the killing of George Floyd

Colleges and universities are social institutions often called on to speak about socio-political issues (e.g., racism). Critics have suggested that when responding to instances of racism on their campuses, institutional leaders often ignore the racist acts and harm caused and focus their discourse on diversity and inclusion. Considering this critique, this study examined how state flagship universities in the United States (U.S.) responded to the killing of George Floyd through the lenses of social issues management and corporate social advocacy (CSA). Through my critical thematic analysis of all 50 U.S. state flagship universities’ initial public statements, I forward three key findings: (1) institutions constructed Floyd’s killing as an example of racism; (2) through their statements institutions localized the issue by focusing on their values or centering marginalized community members’ experiences; and (3) the majority of institutional responses functioned to reinforce the individualistic logics of whiteness. Based on these findings, I argue that to advance research on organizational communication about social issues, CSA should be considered beyond overt statements for or against issues and suggest that as organizations discuss socio-political issues their communication may reinforce hegemonic ideologies and create paradoxes for their marginalized publics. I conclude by proposing an approach to social issues management that could be used by organizations seeking to promote social justice.     

Transnational land investment web: land grabs,TNCs, and the challenge of global governance

ABSTRACT

Despite international media’s waning attention, research and political debates on global land grabbing have not subsided. We argue the importance of understanding the ‘transnational land investment web’ of corporate and state actors and institutions, which are not always immediately visible. Focusing on transnational corporations (TNCs) based in the European Union (EU), we examine five sets of actors and institutional spheres through which these actors are able to grab lands beyond Europe. It is crucial to understand these not as individual sets of actors or institutions, but as interconnected sets, comprising a web. These are EU-based: (1) Private companies using regular institutional platforms; (2) Finance capital companies; (3) Public–private partnerships; (4) Development Finance Institutions; and (5) Companies using EU policies to gain control of land through the supply chain. One implication of this complex web is that democratic governance in the context of land grabs becomes an even more daunting challenge.     

Employee Participation in the Management of Working Life: An Historical Analysis Focusing on Danish and Scandinavian Conditions

It is argued that the historical development of employee participation in the management of working life is a complex process in which three different institutional logics have been at play throughout the twentieth century in industrialized societies: professional communities, collective bargaining, and co-management. Even though the logics were constructed at different times in history, none of them is necessarily obsolete. But their importance in the total picture of the regulation of working life has changed. The logics are robust as institutions in the sense that they have tried, each in their own way, to adapt to the challenges of working life—that is, to new technology and globalization. As the concrete historical development differs from country to country, requiring a contextual delimitation, I have chosen to focus primarily on conditions in Denmark and secondarily on conditions in the Scandinavian countries: Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. In a concluding perspective a number of traits characterizing international development are pointed at, traits that may become important for the three institutional logics. They concern changes in employment relations and in the nature of tasks.     

Paradigms for analysis of social institutions: A case for sociological institutionalism

This paper makes a case for sociological institutionalism, particularly its Veblenian variant or connection. This is attempted against a background of the surge of renewed interest in analyzing institutions within modern social science, especially economics and sociology. This is indicated by the emergence of the new institutional economics as the (modified) neoclassical approach to institutions and the revival of economic sociology with its conception of the institutional embeddedness of the economy, respectively. Still, many pertinent differences between economic and sociological institutionalism are overlooked or minimized in the current literature. By exploring such differences, the paper helps span a gap in the literature in which comparative analyses of economic and sociological approaches to institutions are rare.     

Overcoming path dependency: path generation in open systems

Studies on societal path dependencies tend to focus on mechanisms that anchor and stabilize national trajectories while paying less attention to transnational interactions and multilevel governance. This paper explores processes of path transformation in societies that are presumed to have the characteristics of open systems. Two pairs of case studies are presented and compared. The first illustrates institutional change through collision, when a national path meets with another. The second describes the emergence of transnational institutional paths and the impact of that process on national institutions and their (potential) transformation. The results indicate that path transformation often stems from a gradual succession and combination of incremental steps and junctures – change is gradual but consequential. They also point to increasing co-evolutionary interaction between national path transformation and transnational path creation. This implies a need for analytical tools that are adapted to the analysis of multi-level, nested processes of institutionalization and de-institutionalization. The paper suggests that the concept of path generation allows for a better specification of the conditions for change in existing societal paths and for the emergence of new paths in the case of open systems than the concept of path dependency.

---

Hiding Spinach in the Brownies: Frame Alignment in Suffrage Community Cookbooks, 1886–1916

Recent studies have examined how the conventions of cultural genres help advance frames. This line of scholarship can be used to study how activists might popularize radical frames that fundamentally challenge widespread beliefs. In this article, I analyze how the gendered character of suffrage community cookbooks aids in frame alignment. I determine how these cookbooks advance ‘femininity frames’ that drew on widespread beliefs about femininity (and thus were more likely to resonate with a broad audience). I also examine how suffrage cookbooks advance ‘republican citizenship frames’ that argued that women should vote because they could embody the masculinized republican ideals of civic virtue and public responsibility. Republican citizenship frames challenged widespread beliefs about femininity (and thus were likely to be viewed as more radical). I find that the embrace of domestic femininity in community cookbooks amplifies femininity frames by intensifying traditional beliefs about women. Furthermore, the gendered character of community cookbooks extends republican citizenship frames to the average housewife by proving that women could incorporate new practices into their lives without abandoning their traditional feminine roles. This study enriches our understanding of the roles of cultural genres in framing, and it demonstrates how activists may try to popularize radical frames.     

'The longest road to equality': The Politics of Institutional Desegregation Under Truman

Abstract This paper addresses two questions. First, how did selected public institutions (principally the Armed Services and US Civil Service Commission) sustain segregationist values and assumptions? Second, how did President Truman tackle institutional segregation given the political support for this system in Congress and the Democratic party before the 1950s? I draw upon the ‘new institutional’ framework to analyse the role of public sector organisations in maintaining institutional segregation. I reject the new institutional thesis that such institutions are relatively autonomous because this claim neglects their political support and political origins, and the extent to which the values and assumptions they embody are protected politically. I argue that the national political coalition underpinning segregation explains why Truman relied upon executive action to effect institutional desegregation. Archival material from the investigative committees Truman established is marshalled to support these arguments.     

Filling the Glass: Gender Perspectives on Families

The challenge feminist scholarship posed to family studies has been largely met through the incorporation of research on gender dynamics within families and intersectional differences among them. Despite growing attention to gender as performance and power in more diverse families, the more difficult work of understanding the dynamics of change among institutions including the family and using intersectional analyses to unpack relationships of power is only beginning. Reviewing the contributions researchers have made in these areas over the last decade and applying the idea of circuits to the study of care work, this article points to promising practices for both improving research on gender and families and contributing to the slow drip of institutional change.     

Laïcité and multiculturalism: the Stasi Report in context1

French republican universalism – expressed most strongly in the principle and practice of laïcité– and multiculturalism have constituted opposite poles on questions of citizenship and integration. The report of the Stasi Commission on laïcité on 11 December 2003 and the following legislation on the donning of religious symbols in French public schools have once again, spurred debates over the meanings and practices of laïcité. The report and the law have been interpreted in different ways. Some have presented them as a reaffirmation of a historically constituted laïcité under new circumstances, others as a divergence from the real problems of racism, unemployment and gender inequality. In this article, I offer an alternative reading by supplementing a critical reading of the report with an analysis of its historical and immediate institutional context. I evaluate the Stasi Report in its immediate context of institutional change, and in the historical context of selected developments concerning laïcité since the 1905 law separating churches and State. I argue that the Stasi Report marks a fundamental break with French republican universalism, and I show that this break occurred contemporaneously with key gestures of multiculturalism: the establishment of the French Muslim Council and the creation of Muslim high schools under contract with the French state. This double movement to narrow the boundaries of laïcité, and for the state to expand the boundaries of identity‐specific, Muslim public institutions and private schooling constitutes a reorganization of the public sphere in France which qualifies as a move towards multiculturalism.     

How people experience and change institutions: a field guide to creative syncretism

This article joins the debate over institutional change with two propositions. First, all institutions are syncretic, that is, they are composed of an indeterminate number of features, which are decomposable and recombinable in unpredictable ways. Second, action within institutions is always potentially creative, that is, actors draw on a wide variety of cultural and institutional resources to create novel combinations. We call this approach to institutions creative syncretism. This article is in three parts. The first shows how existing accounts of institutional change, which are rooted in structuralism, produce excess complexity and render the most important sources and results of change invisible. We argue that in order to ground the theory of creative syncretism we need a more phenomenological approach, which explains how people live institutional rules. We find that grounding in John Dewey’s pragmatist theory of habit. The second part of the article explains Dewey and shows how the theory of habit can ground an experiential account of institutional rules. The third part presents a field guide to creative syncretism. It uses an experiential approach to provide novel insights on three problems that have occupied institutionalist research: periodization in American political development, convergence among advanced capitalist democracies, and institutional change in developing countries.     

Frame attunement and footing in the organisation of talk radio openings

Conversation analysts have argued that institutions do not define the kind of talk produced within them; rather participants' ways of designing their talk actually constructs the 'institutionality' of such settings. Previous research has focused mainly on sequential considerations. This article extends that research by drawing on Goffmanian ideas of frame attunement and footing. Focusing on opening sequences on a talk radio show, I trace the incremental process by which mutually ratified participation in an institutional encounter is accomplished as a temporally unfolding, conjoint activity. The first three seconds of each call see the participants embodying a series of footings as they come to establish their relevant institutional identities.     

From democratic participation to civic resistance: the loss of institutional trust as an outcome of activism in the refugee solidarity movement

Adding to the literature on non‐institutional political action and trust, this article argues that the loss of institutional trust is not only a cause but also an outcome of political activism. Studying the Danish refugee solidarity movement in a mixed‐methods research design including survey and qualitative interview data, the article shows that three kinds of activism – political activism, humanitarian activity, and civil disobedience – relate differently to the loss of trust in the institutions of the Parliament, the legal system, and the police. Political activism primarily affects a loss of trust in the Parliament due to low external efficacy and a closed political opportunity structure. Civil disobedience affects a loss of trust in the legal system and the police due to a perceived lack of procedural justice. Humanitarian activity does not affect a loss of institutional trust because it does not imply interaction with the institutions to the same extent as the other kinds of activism. The consequence of losing trust in the political institutions is not an abandonment of democratic values, nor political apathy, but rather a change in civic engagement from a mode of democratically legitimizing participation in the institutions to a mode of contending and questioning the legitimacy of the political institutions. This finding indicates that in turn loss of institutional trust may cause an increase in extra‐institutional political action which is consistent with the commonly assumed causality in the literature. This leads to a final integrating argument for conceptualizing activism and loss of institutional trust as reinforcing factors in a process where, in line with the main finding of this study, activism may cause a loss of institutional trust which, in turn, may cause additional activism, as argued in the existing literature.     

What does it mean to be cosmopolitan? An examination of the varying meaningfulness and commensurability of everyday ‘cosmopolitan’ practices

The literature on cosmopolitanism has mushroomed in the past decade or more as attempts are made to theorise new patterns of mobility, interactions between previously distant social groups and the emergence of institutions to manage these processes. In this paper, I build on the arguments of those who have emphasised the strategic aspects and temporal dimensions of cosmopolitan expressions and practices, by focusing on the resources and constraints that different actors operate with, or under, and, as a result, the varying commitments they have to different ‘others’. Using this type of grounded approach, a number of Illustrative examples from a study of social identities in England are then analysed and used to theorise cosmopolitanism, as a perspective that is periodically articulated, in relation to specific needs, contexts or prompts, rather than being an inherent property of particular individuals, groups or situations.     

Accounts of False Memory Syndrome: Parents, “Retractors,” and the Role of Institutions in Account Making

There have been two traditions of research under the concept of accounts. One tradition, the social interactionist, has focused on the interactional use of accounts by individuals to neutralize negative evaluations of questionable acts or their consequences and restore social equilibrium. The second tradition, the social psychological, has focused on the autobiographical and explanatory use of accounts to create and organize meaning for troubling or stressful life events. In both traditions, scholars have been almost exclusively concerned with the individual-level functions of accounts. Analyzing the institutional origins of false memory syndrome and the retractor account episodes in which it is used, I argue for the expansion of accounts research to include the role of institutions and collective actors in the production of new account frameworks. Further, I argue that the conceptualizations of accounts in the two traditions of research can be effectively combined in a way that is sociologically stronger than either alone.