Problematizing Actors and Institutions in Institutional Work

The growing popularity of institutional work suggests a broad agentic turn in institutional approaches to organizational studies. We briefly describe the contribution of the evolving institutional-work research agenda. Then, we identify two problematic areas in this line of research: the privileged causal status of “actors” and the under-theorized nature of institutions. We suggest that re-engagement with insights of the earlier, foundational work in neo-institutional theory would benefit this emerging research agenda.

On the Nature of Institutional Entrepreneurs: Insights From the Life of Rachel Carson

Institutional entrepreneurship is important for creating and transforming institutions, yet little is known about the individuals who conceive, initiate, and champion institutional projects. Extant research emphasizes factors contributing to institutional entrepreneurs’ success at championing change rather than their conception and initiation of change. A large stream of entrepreneurship research, however, focuses squarely on entrepreneurs as individuals and the psychological forces driving them. In this theory-building article, we adopt a psychodynamic approach to explore institutional entrepreneurs as individuals. Drawing upon an in-depth biographical case study of one of the most celebrated institutional entrepreneurs of the 20th century, Rachel Carson, our findings illustrate that the projects of institutional entrepreneurs can be understood as expressions of vision and passion rooted deeply in life issues and of three aspects of character forged in formative experience: independence and comfort with marginality, desire to perform, and a sense of agency and duty.

Lab coats versus business suits

Purpose

This paper seeks to examine whether the primary factors motivating the career plans of high‐achieving Indian adolescents vary between academic specializations. Particular attention is to be paid to differences between science and business students.

Design/methodology/approach

The study surveyed approximately 2,700 secondary school students in South India regarding their academic and career plans and their perceptions of business compared with science. Survey results were analyzed using both descriptive techniques and multinomial logistic regression.

Findings

Students perceive business to be comparable with, but not superior to, science and engineering. The proportion of students choosing business over science increased among males and in some more economically developed cities. Engineering students were most likely to cite parents as a major influence, while business students more often pointed to salary and career prospects.

Research limitations/implications

The study's scope was limited to South India. Greater geographic coverage could broaden the generalizability of the results.

Practical implications

The increasing desirability of formal business education can give rise to a stronger entrepreneurial base and greater business development in India. Furthermore, improved management skills in the Indian workforce can attract higher value‐added offshore work from multinational corporations.

Originality/value

The existing literature contains little empirical research directly comparing business students with their peers in science and engineering, with no such study previously conducted in India. The results shed light on what attracts students to each track and can inform policy aimed at encouraging further enrollment in specific fields.

The business of business incubators

Purpose

New business ideas, especially those which address markets that do not yet exist, face huge difficulties in securing vital resources. Hence, governments support the creation of a protected environment, business incubators, in which these early ventures can develop. Business incubators perform two different processes: servicing the companies they host and fulfilling their main stakeholders' demands. Hence, this paper is critical of whether business incubators in Lithuania have been installed due to real economic demand to help all the promising startups to develop or if they serve primarily political goals. Business incubators are exposed to pressure from shareholders, both public and private, and adopt certain strategies to deal with their expectations. The paper aims to explore how the management of business incubators understand their own position, tasks and challenges and how they see their business incubators performing now and in the future.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper adds viewpoints from the sociology‐based institutional theory, adopting a more critical view on how institutions emerge, how they are influenced by their environment and how they shape the environment in which they operate. In‐depth interviews were conducted with the management of the business incubators. The paper included all seven business incubators of Lithuania: five business incubators in Vilnius and two business incubators in Kaunas.

Findings

The studied Lithuanian business incubators have a strong focus on property, together with the offering of training and consulting, although at a very superficial level. There are strong arguments in favor of a mimicking process and institutional behavior. What made these property developments so attractive was the available public money, particularly from the European Union. As long as the money keeps flowing, there is a strong incentive to grow. The managers say that their public shareholders provide only weak support after the business incubator was set up. Their private investors, on the other hand, are interested in high rents. In addition, teams operating the business incubators are small, most consisting of not more than three people; a much lower number than the European average of 12.

Originality/value

The empirical results offer interesting insights into the self‐understanding of the management of Lithuanian business incubators, their setup and the environment in which they operate.

A matter of trust? A study of coordination of Swedish stakeholders in return-to-work

INTRODUCTION

Stakeholder cooperation in return-to-work has been increasingly emphasized over the last years. However, there is a lack of empirical studies on the subject. This study explores different public stakeholders' experiences of participating in Coordination Associations (CAs), a Swedish form of structured cooperation in return-to-work. The aim of the study is to determine the impact of stakeholder interests on the prerequisites for cooperation.

METHODS

Thirty-five representatives from two CAs in eastern Sweden were interviewed regarding the aim, structure and strategies for their common work.

RESULTS

Stakeholders' actions are to a high degree determined by their institutional preferences and self-interest. In the CAs, the motives for cooperation differ, and although these differences supposedly could be overcome, they are in fact not. One of the stakeholders, the Public Employment Service, limit its interest to coordinating resources, while the other three wishes to engage in elaborated cooperative work forms, implying the crossing of organizational borders. This discrepancy can largely be attributed to the difficulties for representatives from state authorities in changing their priorities in order to make cooperation work.

CONCLUSIONS

Stakeholders' interests have a high impact on the prerequisites for cooperation in return-to-work. By referring to organizational goals, stakeholders engage in non-cooperative behaviour, which threatens to spoil cooperative initiatives and to develop distrust in cooperative work forms. The results of this study expose the complexity of and threats to cooperation, and its conclusions may be used by return-to-work stakeholders in different jurisdictions to improve the possibilities for the development of cooperative structures.

Team Work in Context: Institutional Mediation in the Public-service Professional Bureaucracy

This paper examines how context shapes team work within the public-service professional bureaucracy. We examine the effects of an interaction between both macro-institutional and local-organizational context upon the micro-negotiation of team work. Specifically, we consider how features of local context mediate professional-institutional effects. Drawing upon neo-institutionalism (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006; Powell and DiMaggio 1991), we view team members as ‘institutional agents’ (Scott 2008), shaping team work in ways that either reproduce or transform professional structures within particular local conditions. Exemplary of international government transformative efforts for public-service enhancement (Newman 2001; Osborne and Gaebler 1992), we focus upon a UK government initiative to reconfigure professional relationships through introducing team work in National Health Service genetic care. Findings from two qualitative, comparative case studies reveal contrasting outcomes: reproduction or transformation of the professional institution, respectively. Specific local conditions — organizational, and human and social in particular — combine to produce these divergent mediating effects towards inertia or change. This highlights the importance of antecedents to team work and taking a historical perspective to understand the influence of context. While the challenges of reconfiguring professional structures through team work are shown, our analysis also suggests optimism regarding possibilities for change, albeit within certain local conditions. The challenge for management and policy-makers becomes the extent to which — and indeed, if at all — such facilitative local environments might be supported.

Crafting Qualitative Research

The purpose of this article is to revision Morgan and Smircich's typology, taking into account the changes in organization and management theory over the intervening 30 years. Developments in metatheoretical perspectives, organization theory, research methods, and ways of theorizing mean our choices about qualitative research have become more complex. In addition, the 1980 typology was based on a now contested subject–object distinction. I replace this continuum with three problematics—intersubjectivism, subjectivism, and objectivism—and examine the ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions of each. I offer examples and resources for qualitative researchers, arguing that considering our metatheoretical positioning provides a basis for building crafted, persuasive, consistent, and credible research accounts.

Learning about urban congregations and HIV/AIDS: community-based foundations for developing congregational health interventions

Religious congregations are important community institutions that could help fight HIV/AIDS; however, barriers exist, particularly in the area of prevention. Formative, participatory research is needed to understand the capacity of congregations to address HIV/AIDS. This article describes a study that used community-based participatory research (CBPR) approaches to learn about congregation-sponsored HIV activities. CBPR strategies were used throughout the study, including proposal development, community expert interviews, Community Advisory Board, congregational telephone survey, congregational case studies, and congregational feedback sessions. Involving community consultants, experts, and advisory board members in all stages of the study helped the researchers to conceptualize congregational involvement in HIV, be more sensitive to potential congregational concerns about the research, achieve high response rates, and interpret and disseminate findings. Providing preliminary case findings to congregational participants in an interactive feedback session improved data quality and relationships with the community. Methods to engage community stakeholders can lay the foundation for future collaborative interventions.

Why do public policies fail so often? Exploring health policy-making as an imaginary and symbolic construction

Although it is widely accepted that public policies are difficult to implement, most analyses of policy failures are conceived of as predominantly rational processes. This article questions that assumption by introducing ideas of a desiring subject and socio-symbolic order drawn from Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to suggest that public policies are also a product of social fantasy, and to draw attention to the implications of this unrecognized function of policy-making. It also employs the idea of defensive splitting borrowed from Kleinian object relations theory to explain the difficulty of translating policy into public organizations, which have to perform often conflicting societal tasks. The example of patient choice in the UK National Health Service (the NHS) is used to illustrate theoretical arguments and to propose an alternative understanding of public policy-making by way of bridging fantasy with reality.

Adoption of ISO‐oriented quality management system in Greek universities

Purpose

Quality management in Greek higher education at least until 2006 was in an early and debated stage. The intent of this paper is to present the extent of use of the ISO standards in Greek universities till 2006 and simultaneously to evaluate whether adoption of ISO‐oriented quality management tools is consistent with DiMaggio and Powell's notions of isomorphism (coercive, normative, and mimetic).

Design/methodology/approach

The authors employed a mixed‐methods approach with sequential data collection with several alternations between quantitative and qualitative methods.

Findings

It is found that ISO‐oriented quality management system is fruitfully adopted in units only if all three types of neo‐institutional pressures (coercive, normative and mimetic) are present. These results and the high response rate suggest that there is a quality movement at the micro level in Greek higher education.

Research limitations/implications

Quality management (QM) research within the relatively uncharted Greek universities poses multiple challenges, e.g. in handling politically sensitive subjects, which may benefit readers in overcoming theirs.

Originality/value

The significance of the paper lies in the fact that no existing studies have investigated the adoption of ISO‐oriented quality management system in Greek universities, utilizing neo‐institutional theory and a mixed method research design. Especially relevant is that the study focuses on quality management at the micro level of units within higher education institutions. The study demonstrates how to distinguish different isomorphic pressures empirically.

The enterprise system as a part of an organization's administrative paradox

Purpose

The main purpose of this paper is to discuss whether an enterprise system (ES) is a part of an organization's administrative paradox. The paper aims to question which role the ES has in organizing, focusing aspects of flexibility and stability.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is a qualitative, longitudinal, case study of how an ES maintains, and even reinforces, existing administrative organizational structures. The theoretical lens used is mainly structuration theory.

Findings

An ES can take the part of an organization's administrative paradox. An administrative paradox is two sides of the same coin when coordinating organizations – the concurrent striving for flexibility and stability. The studied ES even centralizes control, creates norms, and enhances power for actors in positions of authority (top management). Because of its structure and configuration the ES is a powerful tool to coordinate. The ES is considered to be organizationally ungainly, but at the same time indispensable.

Practical implications

The paper provides valuable insights on how the studied organizations try to deal with standardization/stability and flexibility that can be valuable for other system users or implementers to learn from, as well as the analysis as a whole.

Originality/value

The paper combines structuration theory and theories covering the administrative paradox and aspects of coordination in order to analyze and discuss the implementation and use of an ES.

Improving the public house in Britain, 1920-40: Sir Sydney Nevile and "social work"

The "improved public house" movement in the inter-war years was a central part of the shift towards retailing by the brewing industry. An important part of the reform movement was the alliance between certain brewers, notably Whitbread, and "social workers", particularly those associated with the University Settlement movement in London. Using the papers of Sydney Nevile, the importance of a particular social milieu is outlined, calling into question attempts to align the movement to improve public houses with transatlantic Progressivism. Rather, this alliance drew upon longstanding English traditions of public service and religious affiliation amongst a fraction of the gentry.

The Diffusion and Use of Institutional Theory: A Cross-Disciplinary Longitudinal Literature Survey

There is a plethora of theories to explore the disciplines of business, management and sociology, with institutional theory being widely used to explore a range of research challenges. In the area of Information Systems (IS), the use of institutional theory remains in its infancy, with much potential for adoption. Much of the rationale underpinning the proposed research is that a systematic review and synthesis of the normative literature may support the direction of further research and the use of institutional theory in exploring pertinent research challenges facing the IS community. This study also serves to signpost cross-disciplinary research, and thus opens up a whole new research paradigm. Therefore, this article seeks to provide a bibliometric analysis and a comprehensive and systematic review of the literature pertaining to institutional theory to ascertain the current ‘state of play’ of the theory. Information on a series of variables was extracted after conducting a review of 511 articles across various disciplines that have utilised institutional theory, published in 210 peer-reviewed journals between 1978 and 2008. The findings suggest that the positivist paradigm, empirical and quantitative research, the survey method and organisation/firm as a unit of analysis was used predominantly in combination with institutional theory. The results of this study may have implications for researchers, journal editors, reviewers and universities.

Conceptions of Control and it Artefacts: An Institutional Account of the Amazon Rainforest Monitoring System

Based on Fligstein's (1990) work on ‘conceptions of control’ (broad managerial paradigms), this paper provides an analysis of the ways in which information technology (IT) artefacts shape and are shaped by institutional contexts. Specifically, we report on primary and secondary empirical data that spans a 44-year period pertaining to the uses made of the Amazon rainforest monitoring system (a set of satellite-based geographic information systems). This paper argues that: (1) the process of institutional change is conflictual, emergent and contested; (2) the design and use of IT artefacts tend to reflect the currently dominant conceptions of control; (3) that IT artefacts that emerge within a specific conception of control can be later reconfigured to serve the interests of other conceptions of control; (4) and finally, IT artefacts might unintentionally reinforce alternate conceptions of control and lead to institutional change.

7 Organizational Ties and Neighborhood Effects

This chapter examines which childcare centers were likely to exhibit those organizational ties that provided resources useful to mothers. The chapter pays special attention to neighborhood context, examining whether childcare centers tended to be more or less connected when located in poor neighborhoods. It finds that many actors played a role in the prevalence of organizational ties, including parents, powerful external non‐profit organizations, and the state. In addition, using survey data on nearly 300 childcare centers in New York City, it finds that childcare centers tended to have more, not fewer connections if they were located in high poverty areas.

3 Opportunities and Inducements

This chapter examines why mothers so often reported making new friends through their children’s childcare centers. It finds that centers, in order to perform the many tasks required for their operation, tended to generate both opportunities and inducements for parents to interact. These ranged from mundane fieldtrips to logistically complex fundraisers. As a result, many of the friends mothers formed were unexpected. The chapter also finds that centers differed dramatically in the extent to which they generated the opportunities and inducements important to tie formation.

1 Social Capital and Organizational Embeddedness

Standard models of social capital have said little about how actors form the ties that generate social capital. This chapter proposes a model based on three assumptions: Actors may form ties either purposely or non‐purposely; forming either purposely or non‐purposely depends on the context of social interaction; and the context of interaction can be shaped significantly by routine organizations. The model theorizes how organizations can affect not only the formation of ties but also the trust they exhibit, the obligations they carry, and the resources they exchange. The model discusses not merely social but also organizational ties. The chapter concludes by explaining why childcare centers are an especially strategic site to explore this model, and identifying the book’s four major data sources: a national survey of mothers of young children, a survey of childcare centers in New York City, an in‐depth interview study of about 65 mothers in New York, and in‐depth case studies of 23 centers in the city.

Unanticipated Gains. 2009. [DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195384352.001.0001]

Social capital theorists have shown that inequality arises in part because some people enjoy larger, more supportive, or otherwise more useful networks. But why do some people have better networks than others? This book argues that the answer lies less in people's deliberate “networking” than in the institutional conditions of the churches, colleges, firms, gyms, and other organizations in which they happen to participate routinely. This book introduces a model of social inequality that takes seriously the embeddedness of networks in formal organizations, proposing that what people gain from their connections depends on where those connections are formed and sustained. The model is illustrated and developed through a study of the experiences of mothers whose children were enrolled in New York City childcare centers. As a result of the routine practices and institutional conditions of the centers—from the structure of their parents' associations, to apparently innocuous rules such as pick‐up and drop‐off times—many of these mothers dramatically increased their social capital and measurably improved their wellbeing. Yet how much they gained depended on how their respective centers were organized. This book identifies the mechanisms through which childcare centers structured the networks of mothers, and shows that similar mechanisms operate in many other routine organizations, from beauty salons and bath houses to colleges and churches. The book makes a case for the importance of organizational embeddedness in the study of personal ties.

2 Childcare Centers and Mothers’ Well‐Being

Using national data on mothers of young children, this chapter examines whether mothers who enrolled their children in centers thereby enlarged their own social networks, particularly the number of friends they reported. It also asks whether these networks improved mothers’ wellbeing. Results are consistent with expectations: mothers who patronized childcare centers tended to make new friends there, and making friends in centers was strongly and robustly associated with lower material hardship and mental hardship.

5 Trust and Obligations

This chapter examines those conditions under which mothers who were so weakly tied that no theorist would expect them to provide social support often provided such support anyway. It finds that centers both intentionally and unintentionally facilitated trust among parents and instituted obligations that the latter felt compelled to follow. These conditions at times generated a supportive network of acquaintances that mothers could call upon. This network, however, was only useful or important among mothers who were highly isolated or otherwise resource‐deprived.

Review: Toward Realizing the Potential of Diversity in Composition of Interprofessional Health Care Teams

Interprofessional approaches to health and social care have been linked to improved planning and policy development, more clinically effective services, and enhanced problem solving; however, there is evidence that professionals tend to operate in uniprofessional silos and that attempts to share knowledge across professional borders are often unsuccessful.

Medicine and management in a comparative perspective: the case of Denmark and England

In health systems around the world the current trend has been for doctors to increase their participation in management. This has been taken to imply a common process of re-stratification with new divisions emerging between medical elites and the rank and file. However, our understanding of this change remains limited and it is open to question just how far one can generalize. In this paper we investigate this matter drawing on path dependency theory and ideas from the sociology of professions. Focusing on public management reforms in the hospital sectors of two European countries - Denmark and England - we note similarities in the timing and objectives of reforms, but also differences in the response of the medical profession. While in both countries new hybrid clinical management roles have been created, this process has advanced much further and has been more strongly supported by the medical profession in Denmark than in England. These findings suggest that processes of re-stratification are more path dependent than is frequently acknowledged. They also highlight the importance of national institutions that have shaped professional development and differences in the way reforms have been implemented in each country for explaining variation.

Institutional Heterogeneity and Change: The University as Fool

While institutional theory has focused on the effect of institutions on individual organizations, this article addresses the relationships between institutions. Using a case history approach, it examines the relationship of one institution, the University, within an institutional complex. The study suggests that the University acts and has a role akin to the Fool in the medieval royal court. The Fool is embedded in a multiplicity of loyal yet agonistic relationships with a collection of `Sovereign' institutions, such as the Church, the State, the Nation, the Corporation and the Professions. Akin to the Fool, the University's skills at normative narrating, sorting and playing are central to the creation and maintenance of a semiotic nexus and the process of institutionalization and de-institutionalization. In turn, these semiotic resources are utilized in the practice of educating. The article concludes by examining how the metaphor of the Fool provides a way of re-thinking these practices.

The challenges of the new institutional environment: an Australian case study of older volunteers in the contemporary non-profit sector

Increased emphasis on efficiency and regulation is changing the nature of the non-profit sector in western countries. In this paper, we explore the impact of these contemporary changes on older, more traditional volunteers. Specifically, we use neo-institutional theory as a framework to explore the micro-effect of these processes in one large, multi-service non-profit organisation in Australia. The findings of an ethnographic study are presented using an analytical template comprising: (1) the observational space; (2) the conversational order; (3) the content of talk; and (4) areas of resistance. Findings from these categories provided evidence of two institutional orders – one a traditional way of operating consistent with a charity model, and the other, a new, dominant approach driven by market forces. It was found that older, more traditional volunteers struggled to maintain the old order as well as to make the transition to the new order. If organisations are to benefit from a pool of potential volunteers and if older people are to benefit from the social and health advantages associated with productive ageing, there are important implications in these findings. Older people are able to make a successful transition to the new order, but organisations need to be more proactive in facilitating the change. In particular, organisations need to reject ageist cultures and practices, provide training and skills development, and to work collaboratively with older people.

Managing the Threat of Terrorism in British Travel and Leisure Organizations

This paper examines the perceived threats from terrorism in six organizations in the travel and leisure sector in the UK. These organizations are particularly exposed to such extreme threats. This paper examines how managers in organizations deal with uncertainty where probabilities are impossible or difficult to define and examines how they face the challenge of interpreting and acting upon these interpretations. Theoretically the paper draws upon two lenses: organizational resilience and institutional perspectives. The former assumes managers can act autonomously to increase organizational resilience. The latter argues that systemic features of organization are more accurate explanations of why managers and organizations fail to spot threats and impending disasters. The data indicate that perceptions of uncertainty and threats from terrorism and theories of action differ in and between organizations depending upon factors such as the accuracy and completeness of information; previous experience of terrorist events and whether or not these threats were prioritized over other uncertainties. Three organizations in the aviation industry prioritize threats from terrorism, whilst three organizations in the leisure and travel sector do not. Managers in the aviation industry tend to take a proactive, organizational resilience stance towards uncertainty, whilst managers in the other organizations are more reactive, or take little action, with systemic features of organization taking precedence over decisions and actions.

Implementation of evidence-based practice and organizational performance

Administrators of mental health services may expect evidence-based practice (EBP) to offer strategic benefits. Existing theory suggests that the benefits of implementing EBP vary by organizational characteristics. This paper presents a conceptual framework for considering how implementation impacts organizational performance. The framework is developed as a system dynamics simulation model based on existing literature, organizational theory, and key informant interviews with mental health services administrators and clinical directors. Results from the simulations show how gains in performance depended on organizations' initial inertia and initial efficiency and that only the most efficient organizations may see benefits in organizational performance from implementing EBP. Implications for administrators, policy makers, and services researchers are discussed.

From Utilitarian Morality to Moral Imagination

In this essay, the authors take Jim March's Journal of Management Inquiry essay on the nature of scholarship as their starting point to assess the contribution of the business school in promoting a “utilitarian morality” model of education where knowledge is valued, not for its intrinsic worth, but because of the consequences it produces. In particular, the authors consider the role of historical, institutional, and market forces in shaping the missions, values, and views of knowledge that business schools purport to achieve. They conclude by suggesting how we might reimagine the business school through the lens of moral imagination.