Research on economic inequality has largely focused on understanding the relationship between organizations and inequality but has paid limited attention to the role of institutions in the creation and maintenance of inequality. In this article, we use insights from the caste system—an institution that perpetuates socio-economic inequalities and limits human functions—to elaborate on three elements of economic inequality: uneven dispersions in resource endowments, uneven access to productive resources and opportunities, and uneven rewards to resource contributions. We argue that economic inequalities (...) persist because these three different elements of inequality feed from and reinforce each other. Our study underscores the potential of the caste lens to inform research on economic inequality as well as organizational theory and practice. (shrink)

While it is well known that SME owner–managers’ sustainability values and attitudes impact their company’s sustainability activities, they often face profit-driven institutional orders. In a qualitative study, we investigate which identities are critical for their engagement in sustainability and how these identities interrelate with their institutional environment. We applied a qualitative design with narratives from 29 owner–managers of hospitality businesses who belong to a New Zealand-based sustainability network. Our study revealed no single overarching sustainability identity; instead, six identities could be (...) identified as sustainability-related and be linked to different institutional orders. By analyzing the interplay between the identities and the institutional environment, we also found mechanisms on how SME owner–managers impact on their business’ sustainability. We revealed that an adequate institutional environment can foster the development of sustainability-related identities, which in turn can lead to cultural evolution towards more sustainability. By integrating identity theory with organizational institutionalism, we contribute to theoretical development and to further sustainability research at individual and institutional level. (shrink)

The implementation of socially sustainable practices in suppliers situated in challenging institutional contexts is examined using institutional theory, both in terms of how institutional pressures affect implementation and what explains the decoupling of practices from the day-to-day reality. A multi-case study approach is employed based on seven apparel industry suppliers in Bangladesh. Cross-case analysis highlights the coercive, mimetic, and normative pressures on suppliers to implement socially sustainable practices. A key pressure identified that has not previously been highlighted in the literature (...) is horizontal collaboration between buyers, which intensifies coercive pressure on suppliers and increases the consequences of non-compliance. The factors that contribute to decoupling are categorized into firm-, supply chain-, and environment-related factors. Further, six propositions are developed on how specific forms of institutional pressure can tackle particular decoupling factors to support implementation. The paper responds to recent calls for greater scrutiny of why and how firms decouple ethical practices and supports the development of the literature specifically on social sustainability, which lags behind that on environmental sustainability and has been largely focused on the Western buyer perspective. The findings have implications for the diffusion of ethical practices into supply chains, especially distant suppliers in very different and challenging institutional contexts. (shrink)

Although natural resource scarcity is a pressing issue for many organizations, it has received little attention in management research. Drawing on resource dependence theory, this article theorizes how organizations manage uncertainty from their dependence on scarce natural resources. For this end, it explains how socio-ecological processes involving anthropogenic impacts on ecosystem services cause this form of uncertainty. It then proposes that organizations develop wide-ranging responses to such uncertainty, depending on their predominant institutional logics, from protecting and restoring ecosystems that provision (...) critical natural resources to further developing those ecosystems for optimal resource yields at the risk of degrading them. The article adds to the limited existing research on the unique challenges of managing natural resource scarcity and extends resource dependence theory by accounting for socio-ecological dynamics that create uncertainty regarding natural resources. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

This paper investigates the process through which firms and non-profit organizations reconcile divergent worldviews in the development of firm–NPO partnerships. Drawing on data from two long-lived firm–NPO partnerships, this study suggests that the dynamics of reconciliation in situations of institutional complexity can be better understood by examining how firms and NPOs manage the interplay of both market and social logics in an inter-organizational context. We have found that during the initial stages of collaboration, partners manage differences by engaging in joint (...) pilot projects and by demonstrating management’s commitment to the partnerships. Subsequently, after firms and NPOs sign a formal partnership agreement, they seek to maintain a sustainable mode of interaction by adopting three distinct mechanisms for managing tensions arising from the partnership: negotiating activity scope, monitoring and learning, and modifying organizational practices. Our research findings contribute to the literature on cross-sector partnership and institutional complexity by highlighting the means by which organizations reduce tensions associated with divergent institutional logics and maintain successful partnerships. (shrink)

This study explores the institutional logics and socialization experiences of STEM doctoral students in the context of the current American economic narrative that is specific to science and technology. Data from qualitative interviews with 36 students at three research universities first reveals a disconnect between a well-established national science and technology policy narrative that is market-oriented and the training, experiences, and perspectives of science and engineering doctoral students. Findings also indicate science and engineering doctoral students mostly understand entrepreneurship and innovation (...) in the contexts of funding research activities and creating social impact, which parallel rather than oppose dominant academic values and norms. Based on the findings, we contend that it is both possible and prudent for universities and graduate programs to pursue strategies that align science and engineering doctoral education with the current national economic agenda and support the personal, professional values and perspectives of students without coming in conflict with the scientific core of the academy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In a world filled with poverty, environmental degradation, and moral injustice, social enterprises offer a ray of hope. These organizations seek to achieve social missions through business ventures. Yet social missions and business ventures are associated with divergent goals, values, norms, and identities. Attending to them simultaneously creates tensions, competing demands, and ethical dilemmas. Effectively understanding social enterprises therefore depends on insight into the nature and management of these tensions. While existing research recognizes tensions between social missions and business ventures, (...) we lack any systematic analysis. Our paper addresses this issue. We first categorize the types of tensions that arise between social missions and business ventures, emphasizing their prevalence and variety. We then explore how four different organizational theories offer insight into these tensions, and we develop an agenda for future research. We end by arguing that a focus on social-business tensions not only expands insight into social enterprises, but also provides an opportunity for research on social enterprises to inform traditional organizational theories. Taken together, our analysis of tensions in social enterprises integrates and seeks to energize research on this expanding phenomenon. (shrink)

Inspired by an institutional logics approach, this article analyzes the barriers to and drivers of the integration of social media in the communication practices in Norwegian ministries. Drawing on rich ethnographic data, the paper analyzes the process of integrating social media logic into government communication units that were largely organized through a news media regime. To understand the process, it emphasizes four dimensions: how the symbolic resources, material resources, formal rules and practices have defined the logics of government communication in (...) the period studied (May 2015–May 2016). The analysis meets the call for more empirical investigation into the interplay between the traditional news logics and new digital logics. (shrink)

Religion is a significant social force on organizational practice yet has been relatively underexamined in organization theory. In this article, I assert that the institutional logics perspective is especially conducive to examine the macrolevel role of religion for organizations. The notion of the religious logic offers conceptual means to explain the significance of religion, its interrelationship with other institutional orders, and embeddedness into and impact across interinstitutional systems. I argue for intrainstitutional logic plurality and show that specifically the intrareligious logic (...) plurality has been rather disregarded with a relative focus on Christianity and a geographical focus on “the West.” Next, I propose the concept of interinstitutional logic prevalence and show that the religious logic in particular may act as a metalogic due to its potential for uniqueness, ultimacy, and ubiquity. Through illustrations from Islamic Finance and Entrepreneurship, I exemplify implications of logic plurality and prevalence for organizations and societies. (shrink)

To remain financially viable and continue to accomplish their social missions, nonprofits are increasingly adopting a hybrid organizational form that combines commercial and social welfare logics. While studies recognize that individual organizations vary in how they incorporate and manage hybridity, variation at the level of the organizational form remains poorly understood. Existing studies tend to treat forms as either hybrid or not, limiting our understanding of the different ways a hybrid form may combine multiple logics and how such combinations evolve (...) over time. Analyzing 14 years of data from Canadian nonprofits seeking funding for social enterprise activities, we identify two novel dimensions along which a hybrid form may vary—the locus of integration and the scope of logics. We further find that as the commercial logic became more widespread within the nonprofit sector, variants of the hybrid form shifted from primarily emphasizing the commercial logic to more equally emphasizing both the commercial and social welfare logics and integrating the two logics in multiple ways. Drawing on these findings, we contribute a multi-dimensional conception of hybrid forms and theorize how form-level variation in hybridity can arise from organization-level cognitive challenges that actors face when combining seemingly incompatible logics. We then build on this theorizing to offer an alternative perspective on commercialization of the nonprofit sector as a contextually dependent rather than universal trend. (shrink)

Even though it is often presumed that the use of technology like medication administration technology is both safer and more effective, the importance of nurses' know‐how is not to be underestimated. In this article, we accordingly try to argue that nurses' labor, including their different forms of knowledge, must play a crucial role in the development, implementation and use of medication administration technology. Using three different theoretical perspectives (‘heuristic lenses') and integrating this with our own ethnographic research, we will explore (...) how nursing practices change through the use of medication technology. Ultimately, we will argue that ignoring (institutional) complexity and the various types of important knowledge that nurses have, will seriously complicate the implementation of medication administration technology. (shrink)

The concept of organizational stigma has received significant attention in recent years. The theoretical literature suggests that for a stigma to emerge over a category of organizations, a “critical mass” of actors sharing the same beliefs should be reached. Scholars have yet to empirically examine the techniques used to diffuse this negative judgment. This study is aimed at bridging this gap by investigating Goffman’s notion of “stigma-theory”: how do stigmatizing actors rationalize and emotionalize their beliefs to convince their audience? We (...) answer this question by studying the stigma over the finance industry since 2007. After the subprime crisis, a succession of events put the industry under greater scrutiny, and the behaviors and values observed within this field began to be publicly questioned. As an empirical strategy, we collected opinion articles and editorials that specifically targeted the finance industry. Building on rhetorical analysis and other mixed methods of media content analysis, we explain how the stigmatizing rhetoric targets the origins of deviant organizational behaviors in the finance industry, that is, the shareholder value maximization logic. We bridge the gap between rhetorical strategies applied to discredit organizations and ones used to delegitimize institutional logics by drawing a parallel between these two literatures. Taking an abductive approach, we argue that institutional contradiction between field and societal-level logics is sufficient, but not necessary to generate organizational stigma. (shrink)

This paper explores whether MacIntyrean virtue ethics concepts are applicable in non-Western business contexts, specifically in SMEs in Taiwan, a country strongly influenced by the Confucian tradition. It also explores what differences exist between different polities in this respect, and specifically interprets observed differences between the Taiwanese study and previous studies conducted in Europe and Asia. Based on case study research, the findings support the generalizability of the MacIntyrean framework. Drawing on the institutional logics perspective and synthesizing this with MacIntyrean (...) concepts, the paper explains the differences between the studies largely by reference to the Confucian tradition operating at both the micro-level within firms and at the macro-level as a means of harmonizing the potentially competing institutional logics to which firms are subject. The recent weakening of this tradition, however, suggests that increased conflict may characterize the future. (shrink)

The paper goes beyond critique to read institutional approaches, specifically institutional logics of CSR in India and their management by Indian firms, from a post-colonial location, to explore decolonising possibilities. Drawing on post-colonial approach of catachrestic reading, it reads institutional logics of CSR literature to argue against a linear hierarchical travel of western CSR logic into India, which is then adapted/adopted/translated or decoupled, along with the secondary status this implies for India; and suggests that Indian and western CSR logics are (...) competing logics. It argues that these competing logics are non-core, but significant and need to be managed by Indian firms. An exploratory survey supports this argument. It also suggests a few testable propositions for CSR institutional logics using “deferment of routine development” and “strategic ambiguity in meanings” as mechanisms. In addition, it shows that decolonising purpose can also be realised by having cross-paradigmatic engagements with mainstream management and organisation studies scholarship such as institutional approaches. (shrink)

Conflicts between labor unions and nongovernmental organizations often impede private labor regulatory attempts to protect worker rights at supplier factories. Based on a study of a failed private regulatory attempt for Swedish garment retailers, we contribute to existing research into union–NGO relations by demonstrating how conflict arises because unions and NGOs act upon different institutional logics. We also contribute to the institutional logics perspective by challenging the current emphasis on either coexistence or conflict among multiple logics, and showing the heterogeneity (...) in how multiple logics manifest on a local level, how this could shift over time, and suggesting an empirically derived typology of manifestations of multiple logics. (shrink)

In contrast to the conventional fund management industry with a profit-oriented logic based on risk and return, ethical and faith-based funds should follow the religious principles of their investment-style philosophy. Islamic funds should obey the theological teachings of the primary sources of Islam, the Quran and Sunnah, as stakeholders expect these religious teachings to influence the investment decisions of fund managers. In practice, Islamic fund managers use Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions ’s screening criteria, based on secondary (...) sources of Islam, which allow investments that are only partially halal to be included in their portfolios. This study finds that a more religious logic in screening practices, although impairing diversification, does not necessarily harm performance. Thus, Islamic investment funds, and the wider ethical fund management industry, should, and could, adopt stricter screening criteria that match their investment mandates and bring more ethical business practices to the industry. (shrink)

Migrations from rural to urban areas do not occur equitably. Food, economic, and health systems are strained by this global rural–urban transformation. Climate change exacerbates agricultural shifts and biodiversity loss. The fields of social entrepreneurship and social innovation address these systemic inequities by re-envisioning challenges as opportunities for positive change. Innovative finance models emerge in support of such initiatives. Despite this transformative potential, social innovators face significant challenges when mobilizing resources, and when moving beyond niche endeavors to scale impacts that (...) facilitate systemic change. This article engages in a sensemaking exercise: we review literature on social entrepreneurship and innovative finance, and report outcomes from a participatory symposium in China with a variety of ecosystem stakeholders. The results presented in this paper help clarify the space and offer next steps for theorists, social entrepreneurs, non-governmental organizations, development agencies, policymakers and investors. (shrink)

This paper introduces a new typology and associated measure of social and environmental mission integration by conceptually framing a feature of hybrid organizations—the degree of integration of their revenue model and social–environmental mission. The SEMI measure is illustrated using a hand-collected sample of 256 North American Certified B Corporations. We explore the heterogeneity of SEMI scores by identifying external-facing correlates and demonstrate non-congruence with Certified B Corporation’s audit results. Overall, our findings advance existing knowledge of these hybrid organizations and how (...) they balance their social–environmental missions with their economic objectives. (shrink)

Increasing evidence suggests that corporate sustainability is paradoxical in nature, as corporates and managers have to achieve economic, social, and environmental goals, simultaneously. While a paradox perspective has been broadly incorporated into sustainability research for more than a decade, it has resulted in limited improvement in our understanding of corporate sustainability paradox management. In this study, the authors conduct a systematic review of the literature of corporate sustainability paradox management by adopting the Smith–Lewis three-stage model of dynamic equilibrium. The results (...) reveal the following: Both environmental and cognitive factors manifest tensions arising from the sustainability paradox. While both proactive and defensive strategies are adopted to manage the tensions embedded in the corporate sustainability, the proactive strategy is more extensively studied in the current literature. Management strategies of corporate sustainability paradox are characterized as multi-level, multi-stage, and dealing with multiple paradoxes. Proactive strategies enable organizations to enjoy short-term and long-term sustainability benefits. The authors call for further research explicitly addressing the following areas: the paradoxical nature of corporate sustainability management; corporate sustainability paradox management of for-profit organizations; the micro-foundations of corporate sustainability paradox management; defensive strategies and new proactive strategies; and a unified standard of sustainability outcomes. The practical implications of this review are then elaborated. In practice, the results imply that organizations would best manage the corporate sustainability paradox by understanding the paradox and its equilibrium stages. This review and proposed research agenda are expected to deepen interdisciplinary knowledge and set the stage for interested scholars to undertake in their future inquiries. (shrink)

The concept of institutional logics, as developed by Roger Friedland and articulated in the management and organization studies literature, is brought into alignment with Margaret Archer’s morphogenetic framework. Drawing on examples from studies of law and organizations, the article argues for the value of conceptualizing society as comprising a set of institutional orders, each operating with a distinctive logic. Logics are made evident in practices and the article argues that those working in the critical realist addition need to pay more (...) attention to taken for granted practices in their analyses. (shrink)

Income inequality in the US has now reached levels not seen since the 1920s. Management, as a field of scholarly inquiry, has the potential to contribute in significant ways to our understanding of recent inequality trends. We review and assess recent research, both in the management literature and in other fields. We then delineate a conceptual framework that highlights the mechanisms through which business practice may be linked to income inequality. We then outline four general areas in which management scholars (...) are uniquely positioned to contribute to ongoing research: data and description, organizational dynamics, collective action, and value flows and tradeoffs. To stimulate future research, we highlight a number of relevant research questions and link these questions to existing management research streams that could be leveraged to address them. (shrink)

Building a coherent discourse on professionalism is a challenge for corporate social responsibility practitioners, as there is not yet an established knowledge basis for CSR, and CSR is a contested notion that covers a wide variety of issues and moral foundations. Relying on insights from the literature on micro-CSR, new professionalism, and Boltanski and Thévenot’s economies of worth framework, we examine the discourses of 56 CSR practitioners in South Korea on their claimed professionalism. Our analysis delineates four distinct discourses of (...) CSR professionalism—strategic corporate giving, social innovation, risk management, and sustainability transition—that are derived from a plurality of more or less compatible moral foundations whose partial overlaps and tensions we document in a systematic manner. Our results portray these practitioners as compromise makers who selectively combine morally distant justifications to build their own specific professionalism discourse, with the aim to advance CSR within and across organizations. By uncovering the moral relationality connecting these discourses, our findings show that moral pluralism is a double-edged sword that can not only bolster the justification of CSR professionalism but also threaten collective professionalism at the field level. Overall, our study suggests paying more attention to the moral relationality and tensions that underlie professional fields. (shrink)

Based on case studies of religious Muslim and Christian family firms operating in a religiously diverse country, we explain the multiplicity of family, business, religion, and community logics in the family firm. In particular, we give attention to the religion logic and how it interacts with other logics when family firms are considering ethical issues. We show that religion has a rule-based approach in Muslim family firms and a principle-based approach in Christian family firms. We also draw attention to the (...) fluidity characteristic of the religion logic, through which family firms interpret the role of religion among other logics in influencing ethical decisions. Our study advances institutional logics literature in highlighting the plurality between and within logics in family firms, and contributes to the growing recognition of the influence of religious beliefs on the ethical behaviors of family firms. (shrink)

This paper offers a novel situational approach to study organizational justice in which the proposed unit of analysis is managerial behavior manifested in argumentation rather than employee justice perceptions. The currently dominant theoretical framework in justice research, which is built on justice perceptions, neglects the unique features of organizational order and vulnerability of procedural justice perceptions. As the procedural justice concept belongs chiefly to a spontaneous market order under which the rule of law is made possible, it is inappropriate to (...) transfer this concept to an organization in which the rule of authority is dominant. Therefore, except the limited legal domain in which managerial freedom is restrained by laws, procedural justice in organizations represents a mirage that can give rise to hypocritical managerial actions that can legitimate morally controversial outcomes via eristic tactics. In contrast, interactional justice is of great importance to organizations in that employees and organizations can ensure their rational economic exchanges without deception. However, current formulations of interactional justice often regard interactions as a palliative recipe designed to alleviate reactions to outcomes and not as a constituent of distributive justice. Perelman’s argumentation theory can offer a new conceptualization of interactional justice that addresses this gap. (shrink)

The theory of institutional isomorphism has been criticized for overemphasizing organizational convergence and neglecting organizational divergence. Drawing on a range of empirical data, this paper shows that multi-dimensional accounts of isomorphic change are not necessarily incompatible with accounts emphasizing divergence as a typical form of organizational response to environmental uncertainties. The specific case investigated is the proliferation of academic organizational units teaching law at Australian universities over a ten-year period that saw far-reaching structural transformations of the Australian university system. The (...) key heuristic strategy employed in this paper is to scrutinize when isomorphic responses appear to occur, and which specific organizational form they take. In the empirical case examined, scrutiny of each of these dimensions strongly suggests that at least some isomorphic responses of universities were driven by a dual agenda of manifesting not only similarity but also distinction. (shrink)

This study examines how institutional logics interplay in a cross-sector social partnership that manages refugee integration in a rural district in Germany. In an inductive 15-month case study that drew on interviews and observations, we observe the dynamic materialization of institutional logics in day-to-day practices and an increasing contradiction and even rivalry between community- and market-based institutional logics over time. As a result, we delineate a model explaining the interplay of institutional logics along two dimensions: the dominance of one salient (...) logic and whether conflicts arise among logics. Our analysis also addresses the unifying properties of community as an institutional logic, especially in the context of urgency conditions. In addition, we show the influence of exogenous events and their media coverage on the interplay and conflicts of institutional logics. By unfolding the complexity of refugee integration—one of the global grand challenges of the present—we deepen the current understanding of the specific challenges addressed by cross-sector social partnerships. (shrink)

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)

Weber's theory of value spheres outlines a project of institutional polytheism, each ordered around a ‘god’. This suggests not only that social theory can build a religious sociology, but that a theory of institutions must be an exercise in comparative religions. Weber's comparative sociology of religions, however, does not align with his theory of value spheres in terms of his distinction between polytheism and monotheism, transcendence and immanence, salvation and mysticism, being possessed and possessing. A theory of institutional logics points (...) beyond Weber's separation of value and instrumental rationality, faith and practice, and hence the ways in which he partitioned the institutions of modernity. (shrink)

Focusing on the corporate social responsibility (CSR) implementation process, we analyze how institutional complexity that arises from tensions between social and environmental elements and economic and technical concerns is managed by CSR managers. We further question how these micro-level processes interact with organizational-level processes over time. Our research is a 24-month qualitative process study in which we followed CSR managers. The study’s results allow us to distinguish between four strategies that CSR managers use to promote CSR implementation and to cope (...) with tensions. Our results further indicate that organizational characteristics influence the intensity with which these strategies are applied and that the intensity of strategy application affects organizational behavior in the course of time. Through the discussion of these findings, our study contributes to the research on micro-level processes that occur in response to complex institutional demands as well as to the development of a comprehensive, multilevel approach to CSR implementation. (shrink)

We examine how recruiting managers cope with communal norms and expectations of favoritism during recruitment and selection processes. Combining insights from institutional theory and network research, we develop a communal perspective on favoritism that presents favoritism as a social expectation to be managed. We subsequently hypothesize that the communal ties between job applicants and managers affect the strategies that managers employ to cope with this expectation. We test these ideas using a factorial survey of the effects of clan ties on (...) recruitment and selection processes in Kazakhstan. The results confirm communal ties as antecedents to the strategies managers use to cope with communal favoritism. Surprisingly, the results also show that these coping strategies are relatively decoupled from managers’ recruitment decisions. The findings contribute to favoritism research by drawing attention to the mitigating work of managers in societies in which favoritism is common. (shrink)

Within this paper, we adopt a qualitative process approach to explore how ethical judgments are influenced by spatio-cultural meanings applied to social entrepreneurship in the context of Mozambique. We analyse how such ethical judgments emerged using data gathered over a 4 year period in Maputo. Our findings illustrate three modes used to inform ethical judgments: embracing, rejecting and integrating. These describe how ethical judgments transpire as participants evaluate social entrepreneurship drawing upon related global normative meanings and those embedded within the (...) local context. This analysis offers a critical contribution regarding how ethical judgments regarding social entrepreneurship evolve from negotiation and interaction within a context of multiple spatio-cultural meanings. (shrink)

Scholars are increasingly examining how formal leaders of organizations _change_ moral norms. The prominent accounts over-emphasize the role of rational persuasion. We focus, instead, on how formal leaders successfully break and thereby create moral norms. We draw on Dreyfus’s ontology of cultural paradigms and Williams’s moral luck to develop our framework for viewing leader-driven radical norm the change. We argue that formal leaders, embedded in their practices’ grounding, clarifying, and organizing norms, get captivated by anomalies and respond to them by (...) taking moral risks, which, if practically successful, create a new normative order. We illustrate the framework with Churchill’s actions in 1940 and Anita Roddick’s Body Shop. Last, we discuss normative orders, when ordinary leaders change norms, evil, and further research. (shrink)

The financial sector has seen a transformation towards ‘sustainable’ finance particularly in Europe, driven also by unprecedented regulatory reforms. At the same time, many are sceptical about the real impact of these reforms, fearing that they are triggering a paradoxical financialisation of sustainability. Building on recent research on institutional logics and institutional fields formation, we examine changes in the EU regulatory dynamics as characterised by shifts in framing the relationship between sustainability and finance. Deploying a longitudinal approach, consisting of archival (...) data and semi-structured interviews, we explore the development of EU sustainable finance regulation as an extended, interactive and contested process. Specifically, we suggest that regulatory dynamics depend on the hybrid configuration of the social constituencies supporting sustainable finance reforms and on shifts in the overall prevalence of the financial logic in society. Our paper sheds light on the inherent contradictions and limitations of sustainable finance as a means for transformative sustainability reforms. (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)

Aspirations to farm ‘better’ may fall short in practice due to constraints outside of farmers’ control. Yet farmers face proliferating pressures to adopt practices that align with various societal visions of better agriculture. What happens when the accumulation of external pressures overwhelms farm management capacity? Or, worse, when different visions of better agriculture pull farmers toward conflicting management paradigms? This article addresses these questions by comparing the institutional manifestations of two distinct societal obligations placed on California fruit and vegetable farmers: (...) to practice sustainable agriculture and to ensure food safety. Drawing on the concept of constrained choice, I define and utilize a framework for comparison comprising five types of institutions that shape farm management decisions: rules and standards, market and supply chain forces, legal liability, social networks and norms, and scientific knowledge and available technologies. Several insights emerge. One, farmers are expected to meet multiple societal obligations concurrently; when facing a “right-versus-right” choice, farmers are likely to favor the more feasible course within structural constraints. Second, many institutions are designed to pursue narrow or siloed objectives; policy interventions that aim to shift farming practice should thus anticipate and address potential conflicts among institutions with diverging aspirations. Third, farms operating at different scales may face distinct institutional drivers in some cases, but not others, due to differential preferences for universal versus place-specific policies. These insights suggest that policy interventions should engage not just farmers, but also the intersecting institutions that drive or constrain their farm management choices. As my framework demonstrates, complementing the concept of constrained choice with insights from institutional theory can more precisely reveal the dimensions and mechanisms that bound farmer agency and shape farm management paradigms. Improved understanding of these structures, I suggest, may lead to novel opportunities to transform agriculture through institutional designs that empower, rather than constrain, farmer choice. (shrink)

Religion and its envisaged structures have both macro- and micro-level implications for business. Of the many stratification schemas prevalent in India, two macro-social stratification schemas are important at the workplace: caste, which has been an age-old, religion-mandated, closed social stratification prevalent in Hinduism that had led to inequality in the society, and trade union, which is a relatively new and optional open workplace stratification that empowers workers and fosters equality. This study tries to decipher whether these two structures influence each (...) other; if yes how and why do they influence each other (the tensions and contradictions that may happen between them), and whether the influence is uniform for all members. We conducted in-depth interviews with 43 trade union members, three trade union leaders of two state-owned organizations in North India. Initially, we found that caste does not have any superficial effect on the relationship between union members. However, a deeper analysis reveals that roots of this social reality reflect in the social and workplace exchanges between union members, and affect their social identity and loyalty. In the discussion we present a model of twin loyalties between union and caste. From the institutional logic perspective, we also delineate the caste and trade union perspective, and show how there is a change in trade union identity because of the influence of caste-based logic. Our findings have implications for industrial democracy, worker representation, and union effectiveness. (shrink)

In order to enable firms to successfully deal with issues of corporate sustainability, the firms' stakeholders would need to participate in sustainability accounting and management. In practice, however, participative sustainability accounting and management are often unfeasible. The resulting consequence is the risk of misbalancing single aspects of sustainability. The purpose of this article is to show that reflexivity in sustainability accounting and management, that is, an ongoing reflection on the relationship between the goals of corporate sustainability and the overarching objective (...) of sustainable development can, at least, mitigate this problem. Reflexivity has the potential to initiate processes of collective learning and could eventually bring about the realization of business models that integrate economic, ecological, and social considerations. (shrink)

In this chapter, I discuss institutional leadership vis-à-vis the value of poverty. To do so, I analyse how poverty has been conceptualised within a Catholic religious organisation, the Jesuits. The chapter shows that, in the Jesuit case, poverty is not strictly defined. Instead, poverty results from the constant dialogue between the individual Jesuit and their leader. This means that the understanding of what constitutes poverty is neither explicit nor implicit. The chapter contributes to our understanding of institutional leadership as the (...) promotion and protection of values, as per Selznick’s classical definition. However, we discuss a less known part of Selznick’s work in which the ambiguous character of values is highlighted. In this sense, and after the Jesuit case, we advance the possibility that the promotion and protection of institutional values by institutional leaders does not necessarily imply the definition of what a value is. As values are not defined beforehand but the result of a constant dialogue between the leader and their followers, institutional leadership can be revisited and freed from the heroic view that has long characterised it. (shrink)

It is well established within the ethics and institutional theory literatures that institutions can have conflicting logics with ethical dimensions and that there are solutions to the conflicts. Within institutional, ethics, and change leadership theory, quantitative, mixture solutions such as distributive solutions have been frequently considered. The ethics, institutional, and change leadership theory literatures have recognized that there are qualitative transformational solutions that are different than quantitative mixture solutions. However and for the most part, with the notable exception of the (...) Thornton et al. :801–843, 2012) typology of solutions, the institutional, change leadership, and ethics literatures have not considered typologies of transformational solutions. And more specifically with respect to this article, the institutional, change leadership, and ethics literatures have not considered different types of transformational solutions to institutional logic conflicts with ethical dimensions. This article: develops a typology of transformational solutions; applies the typology with historical examples of conflicting institutional ethics logics within factory, cultural, and institutional social change leadership cases; and, considers practical and theoretical implications for institutional ethics change leadership for achieving and/or resisting different types of transformational solutions. (shrink)

Business sustainability aims to combine market logic with social welfare logic. In literature, it is commonly assumed that sustainability and the social welfare logic associated with it are characterized by a long-term orientation. However, this assumption is problematic because this principle may not apply in certain contexts. This qualitative study challenges this assumption and focuses on the mechanisms by which time affects the adoption of sustainability practices in the context of socially responsible investing (SRI) practices in Swiss banks and insurance (...) companies. The article provides insights into the mechanisms associated with different time horizons and investigates their effects on the adoption of SRI in financial intermediaries. It also shows how the dimension of time shapes interactions between the two institutional logics underlying SRI in business organizations through specific mechanisms. (shrink)

This paper investigates the difficulties of creating economic, social, and environmental values when operating as a hybrid venture. Drawing on hybrid organizing and sustainable business model research, it explores the implications of alternative forms of business model experimented with by farmer owned, fairtrade social enterprise Cafédirect. Responding to changes and challenges in the market and societal environment, Cafédirect has tried multiple business model innovations to deliver on all three forms of value capture, with differing levels of success. This longitudinal case (...) study, therefore, provides a contribution to our understanding of how business models enact hybrid mission, providing a platform for triple-bottom-line value capture. In doing so, we are able to expand on the normative understandings of integrating hybrid objectives, and the complications of multiple types of value capture. (shrink)

Building on a long tradition of measuring cultural logics from a relational perspective, we analyze a recent survey of American university students to assess whether institutional logics operate in the lived experience of individuals. An institutional logic is an analytic troika of object, practice, and subject linked together through dually ordered systems of articulations. Using the formal method of correspondence analysis (MCA) we identify two latent dimensions that order physical, verbal, emotional, categorical, and moral practices of and investments in love. (...) We take these dimensions as evidence of an institutional logic. The dominant first dimension is organized through talk of love, non-genital physical intimacies, and affective investment. It has no sexual specificity. The subsidiary second dimension is organized through moral investment and it has a genital sexual specificity. There is little difference between women and men, either in the way these dimensions are organized or in the location of men and women within these dimensionalized spaces. We find that romantic love has a situated material effect in terms of increasing the probabilities of orgasm. (shrink)

Quantification, in the form of accountability measures, organizational rankings, and personal metrics, plays an increasingly prominent role in modern society. While past research tends to depict quantification primarily as either an external intervention or a tool that can be employed by organizations, we propose that conceptualizing quantification as a logic provides a more complete understanding of its influence and the profound transformations it can generate. Drawing on a 14-month ethnographic study of Korean higher education and 100 in-depth interviews with key (...) actors in this field, this study demonstrates four pathways through which the logic of quantification is embedded into organizations. Specifically, we show how this new logic reshaped organizational structure, practices, power, and culture—changes that in turn buttress and reproduce the logic. Theoretically, this study provides a new perspective on the deep institutionalization of quantification: why quantification is often intractable and “de-quantification” so rare. In addition, this work contributes to the organizational literature on institutional logics by demonstrating how prevailing logics build defenses to resist challengers and thus maintain their influence. Most generally, we consider how the self-reinforcing nature of this logic contributes to the intensification of rationalization in contemporary society. (shrink)

The term ‘sustainability’ is vague and open to interpretation. In this paper we analyze how firms use the term in an effort to make the concept their own, and how it becomes a premise for further decisions, by applying a bottom-up approach focusing on the interpretation of ‘sustainability’ in the Norwegian salmon-farming industry. The study is based on a strategic selection of informants from the industry and the study design rests on: 1) identification of the main drivers of sustainability, and (...) 2) the application of five different discursive strategies to analyze how the firms maneuver to legitimize ‘sustainability’ in their conduct. We employ the Critical Discourse Analysis framework, which emphasizes how discourses provide different concepts of meaning. The sustainability concept is assessed based on how sustainability is brought into action by social actors in a legitimate way, and how this action results in sustainable practices. The empirical case of the study is the verbal justification of sustainability practices among representatives of the Norwegian salmon-farming industry. We aim to find out how these representatives translate the rather vague directives of the sustainability concept into legitimate choices that resonate with the firms’ contextual environment, hence, how the salmon farmers perceive, explore, interpret, explain, enact, and defend the diverse landscape of sustainability when implementing professional decisions. We found a trend of passive adaptation to external requirements, such as public regulations and regulative requirements from certification bodies. At the same time, there are progressive forces that attempt to improve the sustainability of the farming practices by involvement in research and innovation projects or cooperation with other firms, e.g. the contribution from offshore engineers in developing high seas farms. The strategies outlined and discussed cannot be seen as a typology to categorize the firms. More than one discursive strategy may be involved in one firm’s choice, and the strategies may work on different levels. (shrink)

The rapidly growing research on hybrid organizations in recent years suggests that these organizations may have particular abilities to facilitate institutional change. This article contributes to our understanding of change and, in particular, sustainable transformation in society by highlighting the importance of organizational forms. Looking more closely at the role of hybrid organizations in processes of path generation, we analyze the conditions under which hybrid organizations may enable path generation. A retrospective exploratory case study of the Swedish hybrid organization The (...) Natural Step confirms how hybrids can take part in- and may facilitate the early phases of path generation: assimilation and coalescence. The conclusion drawn is that hybrids have multivocal abilities that enable them to earn trust and authority to open up “neutral” spaces for orientation and connection between actors in separated sub-paths, and that this in turn may ease tensions and trigger dialogue and exchange, also between former opponents. Yet, as also seen in the case, this enabling position of the hybrid may be both fragile and temporary. (shrink)

The effective implementation of regulation in organizations is an ongoing concern for both research and practice, in order to avoid deviant behavior and its consequences. However, the way compliance with regulations is actually enacted or “performed” within organizations instead of merely executed, remains largely under-characterized. Evidence from an ethnographic study in the compliance unit of a French investment bank allows us to develop a detailed practice approach to how regulation is actually implemented in firms. We characterize the work accomplished by (...) compliance analysts who are in fact, “curving” the script of regulation within what we conceptualize as a “comfort zone”. Beyond agency, ethics appears as a key element in linking the “letter of the law”, which serves as a referential anchor to guide action, with the complex nature of specific situations. We analyze the way individuals and compliance teams cope with, interpret, struggle and in fine, perform regulation within this comfort zone. A particular interest is thus given to the work of embedded ethics in this process, as an enabler to partly recouple compliance with the regulated activity. We find that blind execution is not only impossible, but also devoid of meaning both from regulatory, risk management, and business perspectives in organizations. We highlight and characterize a hermeneutic dimension to this work, essential to effectively perform regulation in complex environments, and we suggest some directions for further research. (shrink)

Against the background of the increasing importance of digitization in health care, the paper examines how medical practitioners who are involved in the development of digital health technologies legitimate and criticize the implementation and use of digital health technologies. Adopting an institutional logics perspective, the study is based on qualitative interviews with persons working at the interface of medicine and digital technologies development in Switzerland. The findings indicate that the developers believe that digital health technologies could harmonize current conflicts between (...) an increasing economization of the health care system and professional–ethical demands. At the same time, however, they show that digital technologies can undermine the demand for medical autonomy, a central element of the medical ethos. (shrink)