This article explores governance issues in an area of limited statehood characterized by the combination of state and indigenous institutions. This is done by adopting an institutional lens focusing on three factors—field structures, institutional logics, and actor agency—to analyze governance settlements. The results point to how complex governance settlements in areas of limited statehood hold together with a certain degree of alignment between institutional elements. However, as the field evolves, contestations and misalignments lead to changes in governance settlements. Analyzing these (...) transitions, this study identifies three key processes that have facilitated deeper state penetration in the field, namely, delocalization of field structures, hybridization of institutional logics, and diversification of actor agency. (shrink)

Authorship, as a form of professional recognition, is an important topic in the study of reward systems in science. Empirical studies have shown that reward systems in science vary by historical periods and institutional contexts. Yet existing theoretical perspectives prove inadequate in explaining these variations. This study extends existing literature by investigating organizational mechanisms that shape “cycles of credit” in science and local institutional logics of authorship practices. Qualitative analysis is primarily based on in-depth interviews with thirty-one life scientists from (...) an elite and a provincial university in China, a country that has undergone unparalleled growth in scientific productivity in the past decade. I identify two different institutional logics of authorship. In the elite university, a logic of “autonomy” prevails. Researchers tend to remain independent and equal in negotiated coalitions and give coauthorship credit based on individuals’ scientific contributions to each paper. By contrast, in the provincial university, a logic of “dependence” prevails. Research teams assign coauthorship credit based on members’ long-term contributions regardless of whether they are scientific or not. Organizational factors, including historical development path, resource distribution pattern, and incentive scheme, are crucial in shaping and maintaining these divergent logics. (shrink)

The article addresses the topic of “group agency” with respect to large organizations. It undertakes to analyze some of the concrete micro- and meso-level processes (microfoundations) through which large organizations arrive at collective “knowledge” and “action.” The article makes use of the theory of strategic action fields to analyze processes of knowledge and the implementation of organizational intentions. The article describes some of the dysfunctions and disunities that should be expected from these individual-level processes, including principal–agent problems, conflicts of interests (...) and priorities among organizational actors, loose coupling among subunits, and outcomes that are influenced by powerful outsiders. It argues for a limited conception of “ bounded localistic organizational rationality” in which organizations have limited coherence, unity, and consistency over time in their beliefs and actions. (shrink)

Fringe stakeholders with limited resources, such as grassroots organizations (GROs), are often ignored in business and society literature. We develop a conceptual framework and a set of propositions detailing how GROs strategically gain legitimacy and influence over time. We argue that GROs encounter specific paradoxes over the emergence, development, and resolution of an issue, and they address these paradoxes using cognitive, moral, and pragmatic legitimacy strategies. While cognitive and moral strategies tend to be used consistently, the flexible and paradoxical use (...) of pragmatic strategies has important consequences, both for GROs’ legitimacy and for their potential influence over powerful organizations associated with them. We enrich our framework with the help of two illustrative cases and discuss the implications of the framework for GROs’ legitimacy strategies in business and society literature. (shrink)

Dominant food systems, based on industrial methods and corporate control, are in a state of flux. To enable the transition towards more sustainable and just food systems, food movements are claiming new roles in governance. These movements, and the initiatives they spearhead, are associated with a range of labels (e.g., food sovereignty, food justice, and community food security) and use a variety of strategies to enact change. In this paper, we use the concept of relational fields to conduct a post-hoc (...) analysis of nine cases, examining how social movement organizations and other actors actively create new deliberative governance spaces. We argue that successes are related to the “power to convene,” a process-oriented approach that increases movements’ capacity to mobilize; leverage different types of power; and integrate, coordinate, and build a systems-oriented vision. The power to convene and create deliberative spaces is demonstrated in a variety of contexts and often results in outcomes that further movement aims, including policy change and repositioning food movement actors vis-à-vis others in the field. Our findings suggest that success is not only measured as policy outcomes, but as an advantageous repositioning of social movement actors that enables them to be part of governance processes beyond simple policy advocacy. (shrink)

Given the known hazards of nuclear energy in seismically active Japan after the Fukushima meltdowns as well as the presence of viable conservation and renewable energy options, the question of Japan’s stalled energy transition warrants critical interrogation. To better understand why, after Fukushima, Japan’s energy policy trajectory maintained the nuclear status quo and an increased reliance on fossil fuels, this article employs network and historical analyses to examine the confluence of post-Fukushima political forces connected to Japan’s nuclear energy sector. Our (...) novel network dataset combines with historical analysis to identify a dense network of overlapping executives and officials in Japan that forge long-term ties between the nuclear energy industry, the state, and the leading business federation in Japan. Following the 3.11 disaster and the meltdowns at the Fukushima-Daiichi facility, a long-standing nuclear safety myth and a tightly networked nuclear energy industrial complex provided an ideological and structural context to re-legitimize nuclear energy in spite of widespread public concern. Instead of a bold, ecologically rational policy to quickly phase out nuclear power and phase in renewable energy, well-worn class and state networks aligned to recommit Japan to a nuclear-reliant energy path. These findings support a theoretical synthesis around our concept of an energy industrial complex with applications in environmental and political sociology. (shrink)

At the intersection of science studies and higher education research, this contribution looks at the way in which the requirements of universities as organizations release development dynamics in academic disciplines and it analyses the interaction between discipline and organization. We will analyse German educational science, bearing in mind it is an example of disciplines that are fractured and consequently have little consensus in terms of fundamental theories and basic concepts. Firstly, we take on a quantitative approach and analyse the changes (...) in degree courses at the structural level and the symbolic boundaries or conceptual distinctions following the transition to the Bachelor and Master system. Secondly, we take a close look at the negotiating processes and practices, as well as at the disciplinary orientations that determine these boundary shifts, using a qualitative approach that focuses on the actors. In group discussions with representatives of the German educational science at different universities it stood out that actors involved in course design are compelled to find an equilibrium between the demands of the discipline and those of the organization, and do so in very different ways. Finally, we discuss the extent to which close interaction between higher education reforms and academic disciplines can be figured out, particularly for disciplines seen as fractured and which do not have consensual common disciplinary standards. (shrink)

Contention in the form of protests, riots, and direct action is a central political practice in contemporary democracies. It is also a staple of sociological analysis, after slowly crystallizing as a distinct object of analysis from the 1970s onward. Lately, however, it has become unclear what this distinctiveness consists of and how it may help guide studies of contention: What distinguishes contention from other practices? I argue that contention can be seen as an ontologically distinctive experience. What sets this experience (...) apart is that it expresses a potential for conflict that underlies all social formations. We can take these expressions of conflict as objects of analysis. This means asking how the conflict expressed in contentious practices is ascribed meaning. I develop this perspective theoretically and show how it may facilitate new empirical analyses of contention’s boundaries, its relation to truth, and ethical relations in contention. (shrink)

Multi-stakeholder initiatives have been praised as vehicles for tackling complex sustainability issues, but their success relies on the reconciliation of stakeholders’ divergent perspectives. We yet lack a thorough understanding of the micro-level mechanisms by which stakeholders can deal with these differences. To develop such understanding, we examine what frames—i.e., mental schemata for making sense of the world—members of MSIs use during their discussions on sustainability questions and how these frames are deliberated through social interactions. Whilst prior framing research has focussed (...) on between-frame conflicts, we offer a different perspective by examining how and under what conditions actors use shared frames to tackle ‘within-frame conflicts’ on views that stand in the way of joint decisions. Observations of a deliberative environmental valuation workshop and interviews in an MSI on the protection of peatlands—ecosystems that contribute to carbon retention on a global scale—demonstrated how the application and deliberation of shared frames during micro-level interactions resulted in increased salience, elaboration, and adjustment of shared frames. We interpret our findings to identify characteristics of deliberation mechanisms in the case of within-frame conflicts where shared frames dominate the discussions, and to delineate conditions for such dominance. Our findings contribute to an understanding of collaborations in MSIs and other organisational settings by demonstrating the utility of shared frames for dealing with conflicting views and suggesting how shared frames can be activated, fostered and strengthened. (shrink)

In this article, we build on the stakeholder-politics literature to investigate how corporate scandals transform political contexts and give impetus to the contentious movements of fringe stakeholders against multinational corporations (MNCs). Based on Adut’s scandal theory, we flesh out three scandal-related processes that directly affect political-opportunity structures (POSs) and the generation of social movements against MNCs: convergence of contention toward a single target, publicization of deviant practices, and contagion to other organizations. These processes reduce the obstacles to collective actions by (...) fringe stakeholders by pushing corporate elites to be more sensitive to their claims, by decreasing MNCs’ capability to repress contentious movements, by forcing the targeted MNCs to formalize a policy to monitor and eradicate the controversial practices, and by helping fringe stakeholders find internal and external allies to support their claims. This conceptual model of scandals as catalysts of contentious actions contributes to a better understanding of stakeholder politics by unveiling the role of the political context in the coordination of fringe stakeholders. (shrink)

Natural scientists have proposed that humankind has entered a new geologic epoch. Termed the “Anthropocene,” this new reality revolves around the central role of human activity in multiple Earth ecosystems. That challenge requires a rethinking of social science explanations of organization and environment relationships. In this article, we discuss the need to politicize institutional theory as a means understanding “Anthropocene Society,” and in turn what that resultant society means for the Anthropocene in the natural environment. We modify the constitutive elements (...) of institutional orders and a set of main change mechanisms to explore three scenarios around which future Anthropocene Societies might be built—Collapsing Systems, Market Rules, and Cultural Re-Enlightenment. Simultaneously, we use observations from the Anthropocene to expose limitations in present institutional theory and propose extensions to remedy them. Overall, this article challenges organizational scholars to consider a new paradigm under which research in environmental sustainability and social sustainability takes place. (shrink)

Scholars have recognized that contentious political action typically draws on relatively stable scripts for the enactment of claims making. But if such repertoires of political practice are generally reproduced over time, why and how do new modes of practice emerge? Employing a pragmatist perspective on social action, this article argues that change in political repertoires can be usefully understood as a result of situated political innovation—i.e., of the creative recombination of existing practices, through experimentation over time, by interacting political agents (...) for whom old repertoires were proving inadequate to the changing context of action. The utility of this approach is demonstrated by applying it to explain the historical emergence of a new set of populist mobilizing practices in early twentieth-century Peru. The results have implications for the study of political action and historical change. (shrink)

We explore the legalization of the cannabis industry in the US, and point at the conflicted path through which this emerging industry has traversed. In particular, we highlight how this industry has navigated controversy to become one of the fastest growing industries in the world. The paper also offers a theoretical model that explains the role played by social movements to propel and shape early antagonism towards increasing protagonism. Evidence of the latter is seen in the form of cannabis laws (...) passing at the state level in the US. We posit that resource mobilization and shaping effects were instrumental in laying the grounds for legalization. A detailed timeline of the legalization for over one and a half centuries is also provided. Our synergistic approach integrates a historical perspective with social movement theory to address a relatively new and under examined phenomenon in the emerging US legal cannabis industry and ensuing ethical implications. (shrink)

This research explores the field dynamics that facilitated the emergence of a dominant understanding of business’ role in sustainable development (SD). Based on a study of the U.N. Earth Summits, we examine how actors meet every decade to battle for definitional control of what SD means for business, and what business means for SD. Through a discourse analysis of texts from business, policy, and civil society actors during each Summit, we illustrate how an ensuing discursive struggle shifts the role of (...) business in SD from being largely undefined in 1992, to being considered an SD partner in 2002, and finally to becoming a driver of SD by 2012. We contend that these shifts occurred largely due to two field dynamics: (a) rearranging of field boundaries and (2) forming of a discourse coalition. Accordingly, our study highlights how disparate actors coalesce around a shared-meaning system and collectively shape the role of business role in SD. However, we argue that despite the allure of a unified meaning-making process between once antagonistic actors, business–SD relations are underpinned by politicized interaction where certain actors come to dominate, and, in doing so, marginalize others. (shrink)

This article shows how the ethical framing of the contemporary issue of modern slavery has evolved in UK construction, a sector in which there is a high risk of labor exploitation. It also examines how these framing dynamics have inhibited the emergence of a common framework of action to deal with the issue. We draw on both framing theory and the literature on the discursive construction of moral legitimacy. Our longitudinal analysis reveals that actors seeking to shape the debate bring (...) their own moral schemes to justify and construct the legitimacy of their frames. Actors cluster their views around five evolving frames: human rights issue (later shifting to hidden crime), moral issue, management issue (later shifting to human moral obligation), social justice issue, and decent work issue—which promote particular normative evaluations of what the issue is, who is responsible, and recommendations for action. Our study contributes to a dynamic and political understanding of the meaning making of modern slavery. We identify the antecedents and conditions that have forestalled the emergence of new patterns of action to tackle modern slavery in the UK construction sector thereby evidencing the effects of the interplay of morally competing frames on field-level change. (shrink)

Inspired by Weber’s charismatic carrier groups, Eisenstadt coined the term institutional entrepreneur to capture the rare but epochal collective capable of reorienting a group’s value-orientations and transferring charisma, while making them an evolutionary force of structural and cultural change. As a corrective to Parsons’ abstract, ‘top-down’ theory of change, Eisenstadt’s theory provided historical context and agency to moments in which societies experienced qualitative transformation. The concept has become central to new institutionalism, neo-functionalism, and evolutionary-institutionalism. Drawing from the former two, a (...) more robust theory of institutional entrepreneurship from an evolutionary-institutionalist’s perspective is posited. In essence, entrepreneurs formulate institutional projects with dual logic: a collective side focused on innovation where efforts are directed towards organizational symbolic mechanisms of integration and a self-interested side directed towards resource independence, monopolization, mobility, and power-dependence. While outcomes vary based on numerous environmental factors, success leads to (1) greater structural/symbolic independence and (2) ability to reconfigure physical-temporal-social-symbolic space. (shrink)

Although some scholars propagate cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) as a panacea for addressing the grand challenges of the 21st century, scholars also acknowledge that this type of collaboration faces significant barriers since the institutional logics of partners such as business, civil society, and government potentially have contradicting interests and future visions. This inductive longitudinal case study on integrating skilled migrants into the German labor market examines the institutional work by which CSP members, particularly government actors, deliberately rein in contradictory logics to (...) reproduce the dominant government logic, and in doing so, establish a high level of institutional coherence. In disclosing the processes by which the dominant logic maintains its hegemony, I contribute new insight into the institutional dynamics within government-sponsored CSPs. I identify various actions and I illuminate CSP tensions and dark sides. (shrink)

This article analyses the patterns underlying debates in sociological theory, using the debate surrounding the distinction between ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ as its case. Although – and indeed because – few authors have attempted explicit definition of the distinction, a number of different distinctions have been subsumed under these labels and research has been shaped by packages of assumptions that have gone largely unexamined in their contradictory nature. The article disaggregates the different distinctions that have been associated with the terms ‘micro’ (...) and ‘macro’ and situates theoretical strategies of the past decades in the grammar of oppositions that makes them possible and innovative. Gap-bridging has been the attempt to bring together aspects of the distinction that have been construed as direct opposites; recombination has been the attempt to release certain aspects of the distinction from their association with one side of the divide. Disaggregating the distinction can help us isolate specific theoretical problems for further work, including work that asks how aspects emphasized by different theoretical approaches vary empirically. (shrink)

Nurses make an important contribution to the organisation and coordination of patient care but receive little formal educational preparation for this work. This paper builds on Allen's care trajectory management framework to specify evidence‐based and theoretically informed competencies for this component of the nursing role and proposes how these might be incorporated into nursing curricula. This is necessary so that at the point of registration nurses have the expertise to realise their potential as both providersandorganisers of patient care and are (...) better able to articulate and develop this aspect of nursing practice. (shrink)

This article draws on historical material to examine the co-evolution of economic science and business education over the course of the twentieth century, showing that fields evolve not only through internal struggles but also through struggles taking place in adjacent fields. More specifically, we argue that the scientific strategies of business schools played an essential—if largely invisible and poorly understood—role in major transformations in the organization and substantive direction of social-scientific knowledge, and specifically economic knowledge, in twentieth century America. We (...) use the Wharton School as an illustration of the earliest trends and dilemmas (ca. 1900–1930), when business schools found themselves caught between their business connections and their striving for moral legitimacy in higher education. Next, we look at the creation of the Carnegie Tech Graduate School of Industrial Administration after World War II. This episode illustrates the increasingly successful claims of social scientists, backed by philanthropic foundations, on business education and the growing appeal of “scientific” approaches to decision-making and management. Finally, we argue that the rise of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago from the 1960s onwards (and its closely related cousin at the University of Rochester) marks the decisive ascendancy of economics, and particularly financial economics, in business education over the other behavioral disciplines. We document the key role of these institutions in diffusing “Chicago-style” economic approaches—offering support for deregulatory policies and popularizing narrowly financial understandings of the firm—that sociologists have described as characteristic of the modern neo liberal regime. (shrink)

Responding to climate change and avoiding irreversible climate tipping points requires radical and drastic action by 2030. This urgency raises serious questions for energy companies, one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs), in terms of how they frame, and reframe, their response to climate change. Despite the majority of energy companies releasing ambitious statements declaring net zero carbon ambitions, this ‘talk’ has not been matched with sufficient urgency or substantive climate action. To unpack the disconnect between talk (...) and action, this paper draws on the literature on framing, organisational hypocrisy, and collective moral responsibility. We conduct a longitudinal qualitative content analysis of the framing of climate change used by the ten largest European investor-owned energy companies and the actions they have taken to shift their business practices. Our findings reveal three main categories of energy companies: (i) deflecting, (ii) stagnating, and (iii) evolving. We show key differences in the relationship between framing and action over time for each category, revealing how deflecting companies have larger and persistent gaps between green talk and concrete action and how stagnating companies are delaying action despite increased green talk, while evolving companies exhibit a closer link between talk and action that tends to be realised over time. Our analysis reveals how competing approaches to framing collective moral responsibility help understand the trajectories of talk and action across the different categories of energy companies. This research makes several contributions to the literature on organisational hypocrisy and collective moral responsibility in the context of climate change. Our analysis highlights the complex relationship between collective moral responsibility, organisational hypocrisy and climate action, revealing how different collective framings—diffuse, teleological, or agential—can both enable and offset substantive climate action. The study also enriches our understanding of the performative nature of collective moral responsibility by examining its temporal dimensions and showing how an agential, backward-looking focus is associated with more meaningful climate action. (shrink)

In various official documents, the European Union has declared its goal to pursue a citizen-centric governance of digital transformation. Through a critical review of several of these documents, here we show how “citizen-centric” is more a glamouring than a driving concept. De facto, the EU is enabling a federated data system that is corporate-driven, economic-oriented, and GDPR-compliant; in other words, a Digital Single Market (DSM). This leaves out societal and collective-level dimensions of digital transformation—such as social inclusion, digital sovereignty, and (...) environmental sustainability—which are acknowledged, but not operationalized, by the EU as pillars of a citizen-centric governance. Hence, the door is open to a complementary approach to the governance of digital transformation. We argue that, while a federated data model can constitute the tech-legal backbone of the emerging DSM, a commoning of data, as an ecosystemic approach that maintains a societal and collective outlook by default, can represent a complement to enact a truly citizen-centric governance. (shrink)