Institutions and Organizations
Dados do Periódico
| Tipo | SOURCE_BOOK |
|---|---|
| Editora | Oxford University Press (GB) |
| ISBN-13 | 9780198843818 |
| Open Library | OL21206087W |
| Total de publicações | 14 |
| Período coberto | 2019 - 2019 |
| Idioma | EN |
| Citada por | 79 |
| Fator de impacto | 0.286 |
| Índice h | 1 |
| Índice i10 | 1 |
Institutions—the structures, practices, and meanings that define what people and organizations think, do, and aspire to—are created through process. They are “work in progress” that involves continual efforts to maintain, modify, or disturb them. Institutional logics are also in motion, holding varying degrees of dominance that change over time. This volume brings together two streams of thought within organization theory—institutional theory and process perspective—to advocate for stronger process ontology that highlights institutions as emergent, generative, political, and social. A stronger process view allows us to challenge our understanding of central concepts within institutional theory, such as “loose coupling,” “institutional work,” the work of institutional logics on the ground, and institutionalization between diffusion and translation. Enriched with an emphasis on practice and widened by taking a broad view of institutions, this volume draws on the Ninth International Symposium on Process Organization Studies to offer key insights that will inform our thinking of institutions as processes.
Introduction: Institutions and Organizations
Institutions—the taken-for-granted structures, practices, and meanings that define what people and organizations within their jurisdiction think, do, and aspire to—are all about process, even though this may not always have been evident in some of the institutional theory literature. In this introduction, the editors call for a strong process approach to institutional dynamics, one that highlights institutions as emergent, generative, political, …
Processes, Life, and the Practice Plenum
Process approaches form a minoritarian vocation in contemporary social thought. The concept of process is regularly used in unconsidered ways that are continuous with untutored uses outside academic texts. But there is relatively little detailed engagement with, or focused conceptual development centered on, the concept—despite a recent burst of process analyses, above all in organization studies and in corners of sociology and geography that eng…
On Doing Institutional Analysis without Institutional Theory
Can we do institutional analysis without institutional theory? Should we? These provocative questions prompt a reflection on institutional thought, but they also serve as an invitation for scholars in adjacent fields—process scholars among them—to reconsider the boundaries between fields and the benefits of crossing them. Such benefits are evident in the work of the founders of institutional theory, none of who were self-consciously “institutiona…
Stories of (and Instead of) Process
Policy makers are well aware that the categories and standards they use to combat inequality are blunt tools, flattening differences within groups and fixing relations in time; they draw on stories of the categories’ past and purpose as a way to justify their use. However, the stories that come naturally are ill-equipped to capture the processual dimensions of inequality. Polletta makes this argument by analyzing two efforts to combat inequality,…
Working Institutions
In this chapter Stephen Barley discusses his path to becoming an institutionalist through his immersion in the research of the Chicago School sociology of the 1950s and 1960s, especially Everett C. Hughes and Anselm Strauss. His claim is that the Chicago School sociologists were wrestling with the same problem that currently preoccupies many institutional theorists: the relationship between institutions (or structure) and action. He reviews three…
Systematic Heterogeneity in the Adaptation Process of Management Innovations
In this chapter, the authors investigate how the best practices approach “diffused” in the Italian public sector. They show that despite the lack of a clear original model or a strong brokering agency—and the considerable changes this management innovation went through in its arrival in Italy—the result was not complete idiosyncrasy. Rather, clear adaptation patterns and systematic heterogeneity emerged. They argue that the bottom-up emergence of…
The Interpretation of Design-Based Cues
We advance current understandings about the nature of interpretative processes unique to design-based cues—elements in the organizational environment, such as colors or textures—that affect institutional processes by shaping behaviors and emotions. The implicit assumption in extant work is that because these cues are salient, they are tightly coupled with distinct meanings. We argue, however, that interpretation in the context of these cues is pr…
Bringing Process into Structure
A review of the organizational literature on field-level institutional processes and the literature on interorganizational networks shows very limited cross-references. Thus, studies on institutional processes do not benefit from the potential contribution of process-related network research. In this chapter, Oliver reviews studies of field-level institutional process and field evolution and related structural concepts in network research. She th…
A Processual View on Institutions
In this chapter, ‘A Processual View on Institutions: A Note from a Phenomenological Institutional Perspective’, Renate E. Meyer argues that institutions and processes are inextricably intertwined phenomena. She maintains that separating them impoverishes both theoretical traditions. Renate E. Mayer elaborates this argument from a phenomenological institutionalist perspective, highlighting in particular the action-based and type-based definition a…
The Long Walk to Aleppo
On December 26, 2016, several hundred people left a disused Berlin airport to walk some 2,100 miles to Aleppo as an expression of solidarity with civilians suffering in Syria while calling for an end to the war. Some would stay the course for the nearly eight months it ultimately took, whereas others joined the Civil March for Aleppo for short periods. In this chapter, we explore what the march can tell us about the relation between processes and…
Data as Process
Adopting a strong process perspective, this chapter seeks to problematize the way in which data are typically conceived in the information sciences and in contemporary organizational discourse. Drawing on evidence from an ongoing multidisciplinary study of data reuse in acute healthcare we argue that, contrary to the prevalent conception of data as a fundamental, natural resource that exists “out there” in the world, data are constituted through …
Making and Regulating Business Judgment
Chapter 11 is about judicial practice in litigation brought against directors of a company, Continental Assurance of London (Continental). The chapter utilizes the “judgment,” a contemporaneous text of the legal ruling in which the judge explains the reasoning behind his decision. By drawing on a judge’s narrative account, and combining it with social, organizational, and legal theorizing, the chapter demonstrates how individual action is connect…
The Discourse of Risk and Processes of Institutional Change
In this chapter the authors explore the role that the dominant discourse of risk has played in the processes of institutional change that have taken place in the field of chemistry as a result of the emergence and expansion of “green” chemistry. The aim of green chemistry is to replace hazardous substances with benign ones so as to eliminate chemical risks to human health and the environment. They show how significant institutional changes have o…
Institutions and Organizations
Institutions and Organizations
Introduction: Institutions and Organizations
Institutions—the taken-for-granted structures, practices, and meanings that define what people and organizations within their jurisdiction think, do, and aspire to—are all about process, even though this may not always have been evident in some of the institutional theory literature. In this introduction, the editors call for a strong process approach to institutional dynamics, one that highlights institutions as emergent, generative, political, …
Processes, Life, and the Practice Plenum
Process approaches form a minoritarian vocation in contemporary social thought. The concept of process is regularly used in unconsidered ways that are continuous with untutored uses outside academic texts. But there is relatively little detailed engagement with, or focused conceptual development centered on, the concept—despite a recent burst of process analyses, above all in organization studies and in corners of sociology and geography that eng…
On Doing Institutional Analysis without Institutional Theory
Can we do institutional analysis without institutional theory? Should we? These provocative questions prompt a reflection on institutional thought, but they also serve as an invitation for scholars in adjacent fields—process scholars among them—to reconsider the boundaries between fields and the benefits of crossing them. Such benefits are evident in the work of the founders of institutional theory, none of who were self-consciously “institutiona…
Stories of (and Instead of) Process
Policy makers are well aware that the categories and standards they use to combat inequality are blunt tools, flattening differences within groups and fixing relations in time; they draw on stories of the categories’ past and purpose as a way to justify their use. However, the stories that come naturally are ill-equipped to capture the processual dimensions of inequality. Polletta makes this argument by analyzing two efforts to combat inequality,…
Working Institutions
In this chapter Stephen Barley discusses his path to becoming an institutionalist through his immersion in the research of the Chicago School sociology of the 1950s and 1960s, especially Everett C. Hughes and Anselm Strauss. His claim is that the Chicago School sociologists were wrestling with the same problem that currently preoccupies many institutional theorists: the relationship between institutions (or structure) and action. He reviews three…
Systematic Heterogeneity in the Adaptation Process of Management Innovations
In this chapter, the authors investigate how the best practices approach “diffused” in the Italian public sector. They show that despite the lack of a clear original model or a strong brokering agency—and the considerable changes this management innovation went through in its arrival in Italy—the result was not complete idiosyncrasy. Rather, clear adaptation patterns and systematic heterogeneity emerged. They argue that the bottom-up emergence of…
The Interpretation of Design-Based Cues
We advance current understandings about the nature of interpretative processes unique to design-based cues—elements in the organizational environment, such as colors or textures—that affect institutional processes by shaping behaviors and emotions. The implicit assumption in extant work is that because these cues are salient, they are tightly coupled with distinct meanings. We argue, however, that interpretation in the context of these cues is pr…
Bringing Process into Structure
A review of the organizational literature on field-level institutional processes and the literature on interorganizational networks shows very limited cross-references. Thus, studies on institutional processes do not benefit from the potential contribution of process-related network research. In this chapter, Oliver reviews studies of field-level institutional process and field evolution and related structural concepts in network research. She th…
A Processual View on Institutions
In this chapter, ‘A Processual View on Institutions: A Note from a Phenomenological Institutional Perspective’, Renate E. Meyer argues that institutions and processes are inextricably intertwined phenomena. She maintains that separating them impoverishes both theoretical traditions. Renate E. Mayer elaborates this argument from a phenomenological institutionalist perspective, highlighting in particular the action-based and type-based definition a…
The Long Walk to Aleppo
On December 26, 2016, several hundred people left a disused Berlin airport to walk some 2,100 miles to Aleppo as an expression of solidarity with civilians suffering in Syria while calling for an end to the war. Some would stay the course for the nearly eight months it ultimately took, whereas others joined the Civil March for Aleppo for short periods. In this chapter, we explore what the march can tell us about the relation between processes and…
Data as Process
Adopting a strong process perspective, this chapter seeks to problematize the way in which data are typically conceived in the information sciences and in contemporary organizational discourse. Drawing on evidence from an ongoing multidisciplinary study of data reuse in acute healthcare we argue that, contrary to the prevalent conception of data as a fundamental, natural resource that exists “out there” in the world, data are constituted through …
Making and Regulating Business Judgment
Chapter 11 is about judicial practice in litigation brought against directors of a company, Continental Assurance of London (Continental). The chapter utilizes the “judgment,” a contemporaneous text of the legal ruling in which the judge explains the reasoning behind his decision. By drawing on a judge’s narrative account, and combining it with social, organizational, and legal theorizing, the chapter demonstrates how individual action is connect…
The Discourse of Risk and Processes of Institutional Change
In this chapter the authors explore the role that the dominant discourse of risk has played in the processes of institutional change that have taken place in the field of chemistry as a result of the emergence and expansion of “green” chemistry. The aim of green chemistry is to replace hazardous substances with benign ones so as to eliminate chemical risks to human health and the environment. They show how significant institutional changes have o…