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The Emergence and Evolution of Field-Level Logics

Patricia H. Thornton, William Ocasio, and Michael Lounsbury

in The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure and Process

This chapter examines the emergence and evolution of institutional logics at the institutional field level of analysis. It integrates the practice literature with research on theories, narratives, ... More

This chapter examines the emergence and evolution of institutional logics at the institutional field level of analysis. It integrates the practice literature with research on theories, narratives, and vocabularies of practice. It develops a typology of change in field-level institutions logics that distinguishes transformational changes from replacement, blending, and segregation, from developmental changes such as assimilation, elaboration, expansion, and contractions of logics. The chapter illustrates how institutional field-level logics are both embedded in societal-level logics and subject to institutional field-level change processes that generate distinct instantiations of societal-level institutional logics.Less

Dyarchic Presidentialization Dyarchic Presidentialization in a Presidentialized Polity: in a Presidentialized Polity: The French Fifth Republic

Ben Clift

in The Presidentialization of Politics: A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies

Begins by charting the emergence and evolution of the Fifth Republic, identifying the key structural and contingent causes of presidentialization within the French political system. The ambiguity ... More

Begins by charting the emergence and evolution of the Fifth Republic, identifying the key structural and contingent causes of presidentialization within the French political system. The ambiguity inherent in the 1958 constitution as to where power lay within the French ‘dual executive’, successfully exploited by De Gaulle, established presidential precedents that overstepped the constitutional brief. Having shaped the nature of party competition into a bipolarized pluralism opposing electoral blocs on Left and Right, political and electoral presidentialization also changed the nature of the parties themselves, both organisationally, and in their relationship to the state. This section explores the extent to which leader focus in media reporting, and leader focus in political campaigning styles, continue to presidentialize the internal organization of parties in France. Candidates needed both critical distance from parties, and a secure link to party resources and coalition-constructing potential. Analysis then turns to the impact of presidentialization on French electoral processes. The leader focus in media reporting and leader focus in political campaigning styles are placed in the context firstly of the evolving relationship between the media and the Presidency since 1958, and secondly of radical deregulation, commercialization, and increased competition within the French audio-visual sector in recent decades.Less

Microfoundations of Institutional Logics

Patricia H. Thornton, William Ocasio, and Michael Lounsbury

in The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure and Process

This chapter explores the microfoundations of institutional logics and their role in the continuing reproduction and alteration of institutions and organizations. It considers Meyer and Rowan’s ... More

This chapter explores the microfoundations of institutional logics and their role in the continuing reproduction and alteration of institutions and organizations. It considers Meyer and Rowan’s (1977) and DiMaggio and Powell’s (1983) neoinstitutional theory which was developed as a theory of structural effects on organizations with a limited capacity for agency. It then considers more recent approaches which highlight the importance of social actors in various institutional practices. The chapter argues that social actors are in fact key to understanding institutional persistence and change. The chapter further elaborates on the model of microfoundations began in Chapter 3. This model, the chapter explains, is based on an understanding of actors as situated, embedded, and boundedly intentional actors. The model allows both for automatic taken-for-granted behavior, and agency and reflexivity. The chapter ends with a summary of what this model encompasses, how it differs to past theories and its future relevance.Less

Defining Life Insurance and Product Development: Divergent Institutional Logics

Cheris Shun-ching Chan

in Marketing Death: Culture and the Making of a Life Insurance Market in China

Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the organizational strategies of insurance firms. Chapter 2 analyzes the disparity between transnational and domestic life insurance firms’ strategies. Insurance firms from ... More

Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the organizational strategies of insurance firms. Chapter 2 analyzes the disparity between transnational and domestic life insurance firms’ strategies. Insurance firms from both camps faced a conflict between local preferences and profits when designing their products. However, they handled this conflict very differently. While transnational firms defined life insurance as modern risk management, and offered products for managing unexpected misfortunes; domestic firms defined life insurance as money management, and launched products for savings and investment purposes. The former adopted a profit-oriented model by attempting to change local preferences; whereas the latter took on a market-share approach by accommodating local preferences. Through a chronology of the ebbs and flows of the market’s development, this chapter demonstrates the tension between the local cultural logics and the profit-oriented institutional logic of life insurance. It documents the battle between the transnational and domestic players in the field, explaining how their battle is rooted in their different ways of handling cultural obstacles, and in their divergent institutional logics of operation.Less

Introduction to the Institutional Logics Perspective

Patricia H. Thornton, William Ocasio, and Michael Lounsbury

in The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure and Process

This chapter introduces the institutional logics perspective as an analytical framework for institutional analysis. It lays out the goal of the book as a primer and programmatic statement that ... More

This chapter introduces the institutional logics perspective as an analytical framework for institutional analysis. It lays out the goal of the book as a primer and programmatic statement that distinguishes the perspective from neo-institutional theory and proposes novel theory to flesh out the meta-theory initially suggested by Friedland and Alford (1991). Second, it discusses the suitability of the perspective for inter-disciplinary integration of institutional research across the social sciences. Third, it sets out the purpose of four of the central meta-theoretical principles of the institutional logics perspective and introduces an integrated model of the cross level effects that is discussed in detail in the following chapters.Less

Dynamics of Organizational Practices and Identities

Patricia H. Thornton, William Ocasio, and Michael Lounsbury

in The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure and Process

This chapter builds on the model of microfoundations elaborated in Chapter 4 to develop a model of how different kinds of social interaction — for example decision making, sense making, and ... More

This chapter builds on the model of microfoundations elaborated in Chapter 4 to develop a model of how different kinds of social interaction — for example decision making, sense making, and collective mobilization — mediate between institutional logics and the dynamics of identities and practices within and across organizations. The chapter bridges the literature on institutional logics, practice, and organizational identity; it links the organization and institutional field levels of analysis. It develops two novel process models to conceptualize organizational identity and practices as the key conceptual linkages between institutional logics and intra-organizational processes. The models are recursive in that institutional logics shape organizational identities and practices and vice versa.Less

Defining the Interinstitutional System

Patricia H. Thornton, William Ocasio, and Michael Lounsbury

in The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure and Process

This chapter elaborates a model of society as an inter-institutional system by developing a new institutional logic — the community logic. This elaboration extends Thornton's (2004) proliferation of ... More

This chapter elaborates a model of society as an inter-institutional system by developing a new institutional logic — the community logic. This elaboration extends Thornton's (2004) proliferation of Friedland and Alford's (1991) initial formulation of the inter-institutional system. The inter-institutional system is one of the central innovations of the institutional logics perspective. Developed as a model of ideal types, the chapter discusses the inter-institutional system's usefulness as a theoretical and methodological tool for developing institutional logics research. In particular, it discusses how it can be used to identify solutions to theoretical problems in institutional analysis, such as the partial autonomy of social structure and action, the definition of an institutional field, and the relationship between the concepts of power and agency.Less

Institutional Change, Industrial Transitions, and Regime Resistance Politics

David J. Hess

in Undone Science: Social Movements, Mobilized Publics, and Industrial Transitions

The chapter focuses on the processes of industrial change in relationship to social movements. It builds on two literatures, one on institutional logics and the other on industrial transitions, and ... More

The chapter focuses on the processes of industrial change in relationship to social movements. It builds on two literatures, one on institutional logics and the other on industrial transitions, and shows similarities and differences between the two literatures. It then examines the problem of resistance from industrial regime organizations or incumbent. Empirical material is based on the case of regime resistance to energy transition policies in the U.S., where the incumbent organizations have closed down the political opportunity structure for policy reform. It then draws on research that discusses three strategies that industrial transition coalitions can use to overcome regime resistance: countervailing industrial power (finding allies in neighboring industries), ideological judo (using regime ideology and frames to advance transition policies), and dual-use design (building coalitions by redefining energy transition policies in terms of a different institutional logic).Less

Institutional Logics and Social Processes Revisited: Insights from the Organic Sector

Michael A. Haedicke

in Organizing Organic: Conflict and Compromise in an Emerging Market

This chapter reviews the book’s major arguments and discusses the study’s implications for understanding multi-institutional fields (in general) and the future of the organic foods sector (in ... More

This chapter reviews the book’s major arguments and discusses the study’s implications for understanding multi-institutional fields (in general) and the future of the organic foods sector (in particular). Four arguments regarding multi-institutional fields are advanced: (1) scholars should examine moral and emotional, as well as cognitive, aspects of logics, (2) multi-institutional fields encourage reflexive creativity, (3) identifying social mechanisms will increase knowledge about how conflict emerges (or fails to emerge) in multi-institutional fields, and (4) consumers may play a minor role in guiding the development of ethical markets. Regarding the organic sector’s future, the chapter argues that the expansionary logic’s dominance has yielded important gains, but that attention should be paid to revitalizing democratic arrangements and practices.Less

Power, Change, and Institutions in World Society

Anja P. Jakobi

in Common Goods and Evils?: The Formation of Global Crime Governance

This chapter presents the theoretical framework, building on sociological institutionalism and its two strands, namely organization studies and world society theory. The chapter starts with a ... More

This chapter presents the theoretical framework, building on sociological institutionalism and its two strands, namely organization studies and world society theory. The chapter starts with a presentation of how world society is formed, which actors are important and how change in world society can be caused. The idea of institutional entrepreneurship is introduced, including a section on how institutional entrepreneurs can be analyzed and how they can use networks to bring change. The chapter continues with an analysis of the concepts of rationalization. The oft-assumed homogenous world culture is analyzed with regard to internal variance, relying on the concept of institutional logics. In the final section, these findings are connected to institutional entrepreneurship and the analytical framework that guides the rest of the book’s chapters is established. The chapter concludes with a hypothesis on how institutional entrepreneurship and rationalization determine different forms of global governance.Less

Visions of Transformation and Growth: Institutional Logics and Social Processes in the Organic Sector

Michael A. Haedicke

in Organizing Organic: Conflict and Compromise in an Emerging Market

This chapter introduces the transformative and expansionary logics that exist in the organic sector, using both illustrative vignettes and formal exposition, and explains the book’s twin goals of (1) ... More

This chapter introduces the transformative and expansionary logics that exist in the organic sector, using both illustrative vignettes and formal exposition, and explains the book’s twin goals of (1) understanding the development of these logics during the sector’s history and (2) examining the relationship between these logics and the activities of sector participants. It locates this project in the context of scholarship about institutional logics and discusses the book’s relationship to other literature about organic farming and the organic movement. It also explains how the concepts of interpretive framing and organizational/institutional work provide insight into links between contradictory logics and social processes of conflict and compromise. Finally, the chapter provides a summary of key arguments and a plan of the book as a whole.Less

Introduction: Democratic Governance and Institutional Logics within the Third Sector (or, How Habermas Discovered the Coffee House)

Meghan Elizabeth Kallman, Terry Nichols Clark, Cary Wu, and Jean Yen-Chun Lin

in The Third Sector: Community Organizations, NGOs, and Nonprofits

This book studies third sectors in different parts of the world. The third sector refers to various types of relief and welfare organizations, innovation organizations, public service organizations, ... More

This book studies third sectors in different parts of the world. The third sector refers to various types of relief and welfare organizations, innovation organizations, public service organizations, economic development organizations, grassroots mobilization groups, advocacy groups, and social networks. These include civil society organizations, nonprofit organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and formal and informal associations. Building on recent work on the origins, dynamics, and effects of civil society across the globe, this book compares the functions, impacts, and composition of the nonprofit sector for six countries: United States, France, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China. This introduction explains the book's approach of using institutional logics to study the third sector, offers new theoretical perspectives on how different types of participation can increase generalized trust and state legitimacy, and considers the impact of neoliberalism and the so-called “New Political Culture” on nonprofits. It also discusses the emergence of New Social Movements and how associational politics might fit into the large picture of political life.Less

The Way We Were: The Institutional Logics of Professionals and Fans in the Soap Opera Industry

Melissa C. Scardaville

in The Survival of Soap Opera: Transformations for a New Media Era

This chapter examines fan and industry perceptions about the decline in quality of soap opera narratives. Both fans and industry professionals agree that soaps used to be so much better, and that the ... More

This chapter examines fan and industry perceptions about the decline in quality of soap opera narratives. Both fans and industry professionals agree that soaps used to be so much better, and that the heyday of superior storytelling and windfall profits will never be seen again in the soap opera industry. While there have long been two institutional logics—economic, where profit is paramount, and aesthetic, where quality storytelling is the goal—professionals and fans disagree over how the genre’s decline occurred.Less

The Weather Prediction Enterprise

Phaedra Daipha

in Masters of Uncertainty: Weather Forecasters and the Quest for Ground Truth

Centered on the unfolding and eventual closure of a recent, highly contentious operational transition at the NWS, this chapter introduces readers to the institutionalized environment in which NWS ... More

Centered on the unfolding and eventual closure of a recent, highly contentious operational transition at the NWS, this chapter introduces readers to the institutionalized environment in which NWS forecasters operate today, and to the operational philosophy, technologies, and identity politics through which its logic becomes articulated on the ground. The aim is to provide a balanced perspective on how institutional forces can, and cannot, structure decision-making in action. Attention is drawn to the typically invisible but profound role of technical standards and knowledge infrastructures for forging a community of practice. The argument is richly fleshed out through the experiences, practices, and points of view of meteorologists working at one forecasting office of the NWS.Less

Institutional Pressure as a Trigger for Organizational Identity Change: The Case of Accreditation Failure within Seven European Business Schools

Christophe Lejeune and Alain Vas

in The Institutional Development of Business Schools

Accreditations have proliferated but little is known about the organizational consequences of accreditation standards for business schools, especially when schools fail to get accredited. This ... More

Accreditations have proliferated but little is known about the organizational consequences of accreditation standards for business schools, especially when schools fail to get accredited. This chapter reports multiple case studies within seven European business schools, from their failure to get the EQUIS accreditation until a new application succeeds. In these cases, the accreditation failure acted as a trigger to modify each business school’s identity and boost organizational change in order to get the accreditation label. Results suggest two institutional logics (national competition and regional recognition) that lead to changes in identity understandings along three dimensions (international-local, academic-corporate, and informal-formal). Moreover, the chapter highlights how the identity change occurred within the schools and the role of changing organizational contexts. Based on these results, a research agenda is proposed on the relationships between institutional logics, organizational identity and performance.Less

Paradigm Shifts and Systems Change: Understanding Housing First and its Impact

Deborah K. Padgett, Benjamin F. Henwood, and Sam J. Tsemberis

in Housing First: Ending Homelessness, Transforming Systems, and Changing Lives

This chapter sets forth a framework for understanding Housing First (HF) that draws on yet transcends its particulars. First, it addresses what is meant by “housing first” as it was developed by ... More

This chapter sets forth a framework for understanding Housing First (HF) that draws on yet transcends its particulars. First, it addresses what is meant by “housing first” as it was developed by Pathways to Housing in the early 1990s. Next, it explores the mainstream approach to services for homeless adults, which has endured for over three decades in the United States and elsewhere, and which ultimately gave rise to HF. Finally, the chapter draws on theories of implementation science and institutional change to develop explanatory frameworks or theoretical lenses through which the rise of HF can be understood. The conceptual frameworks that emerge—addressing change at both the micro- and macro-levels—constitute the scaffolding for the remainder of the book.Less

Making and Regulating Business Judgment: Judicial Practice, Logics, and Orders

Terry McNulty and Abigail Stewart

in Institutions and Organizations: A Process View

Chapter 11 is about judicial practice in litigation brought against directors of a company, Continental Assurance of London (Continental). The chapter utilizes the “judgment,” a contemporaneous text ... More

Chapter 11 is about judicial practice in litigation brought against directors of a company, Continental Assurance of London (Continental). The chapter utilizes the “judgment,” a contemporaneous text of the legal ruling in which the judge explains the reasoning behind his decision. By drawing on a judge’s narrative account, and combining it with social, organizational, and legal theorizing, the chapter demonstrates how individual action is connected to societal order through mechanisms of practice and logics. This processual analysis of judicial practice is valuable for the development of practice theorizing that has been criticized for an inability to handle big topics, as well as the development of micro-foundations of institutional theory.Less

Evaluation in the Institutionalized Organization

in The Evaluation Society

This chapter serves as a detailed analysis of the underlying purpose of institutionalized organization for evaluation. It pinpoints specific occurrences in evaluation that have institutional logics, ... More

This chapter serves as a detailed analysis of the underlying purpose of institutionalized organization for evaluation. It pinpoints specific occurrences in evaluation that have institutional logics, while putting forward the thesis that a certain element is taken for granted due to the support it receives from values, norms, and other legitimacy sources. This chapter also stresses the fact that evaluation in institutions might not even be a conscious “decision”; rather, it might simply be a practice that is done because it seems to be the right thing for contemporary organizations to do.Less