Institutional projects and contradictory logics: Responding to complexity in institutional field change

Logic Plasticity and Bounded Custodial Work in Inter-Institutional Projects

I studied competing institutional logics in inter-institutional projects in aerospace to understand which logic would prevail when several logics compete in temporary organizing. While competing logic tensions between academia and the industry were expected, I additionally found competing logic tensions between multinationals and suppliers. I argue that the competing logic tensions originated from the informal roles that emerged from the interactions among the partners in the projects, which were predetermined by the complementary knowledge that initially justified the collaborations. These informal roles activated custodial work among the partners, which was bounded by logic plasticity. Contrary to what was expected, the more rigid logics prevailed over the most plastic logics in temporary organizing.

Navigating Tensions to Create Value: An Institutional Logics Perspective on the Change Program and its Organizational Context

Research has emphasized the need to understand change programs’ value creation (VC) within their organizational context. This article employs institutional logics to explore the change program–organizational context interface, and investigates how program management actors navigate the interface to create value. A longitudinal comparative study was conducted during the execution of two public-sector municipal merger programs. Contributing to the theory on change program VC by identifying change programs and contexts as different logics, findings show that perspectives on VC may conflict. We theorize navigation practices of problematizing, designing, and team building to resolve the tensions and facilitate program VC.

Institutionalization of a collaborative governance model to deliver large, inter-organizational projects

Purpose

In this study, we develop further understanding of how institutional change is created within a mature and local industry. In this pursuit, we examine how a collaborative large project governance model was institutionalized at an industrial sector-level through both industry-level activities and “institutional projects”.

Design/methodology/approach

This study builds on the foundations of institutional fields and institutional change, suggesting that projects are not only shaped by their contexts but also produce institutional change themselves. We conducted extensive fieldwork on the institutionalization of a collaborative project governance model in Finland.

Findings

The findings illustrate how institutional change in governance of large and complex inter-organizational projects is created at the institutional field level. The institutionalized collaborative project governance model includes aspects of both relational and contractual governance. The change was facilitated by temporal links between the institutional projects as well as vertical links between the institutional projects and the field-level development programs.

Originality/value

This is one of the first studies to address how a collaborative large project governance model becomes the norm at the institutional field level beyond the boundaries of an individual project or organization.

Coping With Institutional Complexity and Voids: An Organization Design Perspective for Transnational Interorganizational Projects

This study investigates how transnational interorganizational projects (IOPs) cope with institutional complexity and voids. A case study of a cross-border gas pipeline suggests the coexistence of institutional complexity and voids that amplify collaboration hazards in developing transnational IOPs. Institutional complexity harms the feasibility of a unified form of organizing, whereas institutional voids sabotage the ability of involved organizations to collaborate in a market-based approach. A hybrid organization featured by modular structure, complementary advantages, and system integrator, was designed to navigate complex institutional environments. This study contributes to the project–organization–institution linkage by depicting the impacts of institutions on project organizing.