Forms of Institutional Work: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Based on a systematic analysis of the empirical literature, we synthesize and taxonomize scholarly knowledge on “institutional work.” We dissect the original purposes of institutional work – creating, maintaining, and disrupting – into a framework of the two dimensions: position towards institutional change (offensive/defensive) and institutional focus (existing/new). Based on this, we identify preventive institutional work – defensive actions by field actors aimed at delegitimizing new practices, roles or technologies – as a fourth type of purposive action. Furthermore, even though we can match most forms of institutional work described in the literature to those proposed by Lawrence and Suddaby (2006), we identified five additional forms: bypassing regulative institutions, jurisdictional work, moralizing, repairing breaches of normative expectations and contextualizing cognitive institutions. We propose an integrated model of institutional work.