Institutions as Instruments of Social Welfare

Institutional logics, work, and outcomes: The case of Sony and Toshiba in the HD optical disc standard war

Purpose Institutional arrangements for collaborative purposes have gained increasing attention within research on service ecosystems. For collaborations to be effective, actors need to undertake institutional work that will result in new institutional arrangements. When institutional work takes place across service ecosystems, actors may be confronted with non-harmonious or conflicting institutional arrangements, which need to be reconciled by translating the incompatible views of diverse ecosystems. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of boundary objects as a means of facilitating institutional work across ecosystems, and present their mechanism in undertaking institutional work. Design/methodology/approach Longitudinal qualitative interviews were conducted with three key actors (funding agency, service provider and clinicians) in providing home-based support services (HBSS). The data were analyzed by undertaking a thematic analysis of the transcripts, which helped to identify the actors’ views on the nature of HBSS and its impact as a boundary object within the implementation of the case-mix system, and thus to empirically illustrate the theoretical assumptions. Findings The data assisted in the creation of a conceptualization that maps out the process of boundary objects facilitating (disrupting and creating) institutional work. This study supports that boundary objects disrupt boundaries between actors’ ecosystems, which was a sufficient condition to dismantle institutional support for the practices of individual fields. Furthermore, the object has changed the type and extent of interaction between actors in an ecosystem to allow these actors to redefine their identity and role in the new institutional arrangement. Originality/value This work has developed a novel conceptualization for a boundary object-led translation process in facilitating institutional work. To the researchers’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the processes and mechanisms of boundary objects in facilitating institutional work across ecosystems.

This article focuses on the dynamics and interplay of meaning, emotions, and power in institutional work. Based on an empirical study, we explore and elaborate on the rhetorical strategies of emotion work that institutional actors employ to mobilize emotions for discursive institutional work. In an empirical context where a powerful institutional actor is tasked with creating support and acceptance for a new political and economic institution, we identify three rhetorical strategies of emotion work: eclipsing, diverting and evoking emotions. These strategies are employed to arouse, regulate, and organize emotions that underpin legitimacy judgments and drive resistance among field constituents. We find that actors exercise influence and engage in overt forms of emotion work by evoking shame and pride to sanction and reward particular expedient ways of thinking and feeling about the new institutional arrangements. More importantly, however, the study shows that they also engage in strategies of discursive institutional work that seek to exert power—force and influence—in more subtle ways by eclipsing and diverting the collective fears, anxieties, and moral indignation that drive resistance and breed negative legitimacy evaluations. Overall, the study suggests that emotions play an important role in institutional work associated with creating institutions, not only via “pathos appeals” but also as tools of discursive, cultural-cognitive meaning work and in the exercise of power in the field.

PurposeE-health tools for patients aim to change current care practices. However the role of IT in transforming health care is not straightforward. The purpose of this paper is to understand how this change process unfolds and what characterizes the process by which visions of new care practices become inscribed into digital tools.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopted a qualitative research design and it is based on an interpretive case study on the digitalization of a tool for diabetes care used in a hospital in Norway. Data have been collected via interviews and observations. Digitalization activities are understood as institutional work in order to examine the relation between the decisions taken in the design process and the intended change of the practices of diabetes care.FindingsThe study identifies three types of activities of institutional work: inscription of self-reflection, inscription of legitimation and inscription of new usage. The analysis of these activities shows how the vision of patients’ more active, learning and reflection-oriented role is inscribed into digital technology; how institutional work strives both for change and for legitimation thus smoothing the transition to a new institutional arrangement; and how institutional work relates to digital materiality.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the institutional theory literature by conceptualizing digitalization as institutional work toward changing institutions. It also contributes to the IS literature on digitalization by providing an analysis of how the affordances of digital materials support the work toward new institutions.

The candidate tackled an important issue in contemporary management: the role of CSR and Sustainability. The research proposal focused on a longitudinal and inductive research, directed to specify the evolution of CSR and contribute to the new institutional theory, in particular institutional work framework, and to the relation between institutions and discourse analysis. The documental analysis covers all the evolution of CSR, focusing also on a number of important networks and associations. Some of the methodologies employed in the thesis have been employed as a consequence of data analysis, in a truly inductive research process. The thesis is composed by two section. The first section mainly describes the research process and the analyses results. The candidates employed several research methods: a longitudinal content analysis of documents, a vocabulary research with statistical metrics as cluster analysis and factor analysis, a rhetorical analysis of justifications. The second section puts in relation the analysis results with theoretical frameworks and contributions. The candidate confronted with several frameworks: Actor-Network-Theory, Institutional work and Boundary Work, Institutional Logic. Chapters are focused on different issues: a historical reconstruction of CSR; a reflection about symbolic adoption of recurrent labels; two case studies of Italian networks, in order to confront institutional and boundary works; a theoretical model of institutional change based on contradiction and institutional complexity; the application of the model to CSR and Sustainability, proposing Sustainability as a possible institutional logic.

This chapter examines the institutional context of the European Union's international relations. EU institutions such as the Council, Commission, European Parliament, and the Court of Justice play substantially different roles depending on the policy area. Such variations reflect differing paths of evolution and the different degrees of integration in different areas of external policy. The chapter first considers how we should think about the roles of institutions before discussing some of the key ideas about the ways in which the EU's institutions work. It then explores how institutions affect three policy areas: the Common Commercial Policy, development cooperation policy and humanitarian aid, and European foreign policy and security cooperation. It also describes four propositions that explain why institutions matter and shows that that change in EU membership and in the institutional arrangements in the global arena has had important implications for the development of the EU's ‘internal’ institutions.

This chapter examines the institutional context of the European Union's international relations. EU institutions such as the Council, Commission, European Parliament, and the Court of Justice play substantially different roles depending on the policy area. Such variations reflect differing paths of evolution and the different degrees of integration in different areas of external policy. The chapter first considers how we should think about the roles of institutions before discussing some of the key ideas about the ways in which the EU's institutions work. It then explores how institutions affect three policy areas: the Common Commercial Policy, development cooperation policy and humanitarian aid, and European foreign policy and security cooperation. It also describes four propositions that explain why institutions matter and shows that that change in EU membership and in the institutional arrangements in the global arena has had important implications for the development of the EU's ‘internal’ institutions.

Institutional arrangements used to steer public policies have increasingly become layered. Inspired by the literature on institutional layering and institutional work, this paper aims to make a contribution to our understanding of institutional layering. We do so by studying an interesting case of layering: the Dutch hospital sector. We focus on the actors responsible for the internal governance (Board of Directors and Supervisory Boards) and the external regulation (the Healthcare Inspectorate) of hospitals. In the paper, we explore the institutional work of these actors, more specifically how institutional work results from and is influenced by institutional layering and how this in turn influences the institutional makeup of both healthcare organizations and their institutional context. Our approach allowed us to see that layering changes the activities of actors in the public sector, can be used to strengthen one’s position but also presents actors with new struggles, which they in turn can try to overcome by relating and using the institutionally layered context. Layering and institutional work are therefore in continuous interaction. Combining institutional layering with a focus on the lived experiences of actors and their institutional work makes it possible to move into the layered arrangement and better understand its consequences.

This exploratory analysis investigates self-reported work practices that managers consider to be crucial for driving smart city transformation. We build upon the literature on institutional work and highlight different institutional work types. Using interviews, we show that smart city managers use a combination of institutional work that includes (a) creation (e.g., introducing new ideas, technologies, methods, and policies), (b) maintenance (which involves preserving certain aspects of existing institutional arrangements that are deemed valuable), and (c) disruption (such as by challenging entrenched institutional arrangements). The results provide deep insights into how smart city managers express their roles and responsibilities in smart city transformation. We discuss implications for theory and practice and conclude with avenues for future research.

Based on a longitudinal case study, this paper examines where, how and with whom institutional work is performed. Given that legitimacy is context-dependent, institutional actors cannot freely demand institutional change in all kinds of settings at any time. This forces organizations, wishing for new institutional arrangements but without the legitimacy to make public claims, to perform institutional work in protected spaces i.e. undercover and away from the scrutiny of a wider audience. Institutional work performed in protected spaces serves to organize and support activities which take place in open spaces where legitimate actors can advance institutional projects.

Business interaction and institutional work: When intermediaries make efforts to change their position

Promoting sustainability at the base of the pyramid (BoP) often falls short of inclusive development due to informal and fragmented institutions, creating institutional voids. Although institutions are critical in BoP settings, there is limited clarity on how institutional mechanisms can address sustainability challenges in low‐income contexts with context‐specific setups and diverse stakeholders. Without such understanding, sustainability initiatives risk being ineffective or counterproductive, limiting their potential for long‐term inclusive development. To address this gap, we integrate insights from institutional entrepreneurship (IE) and institutional work (IW) with BoP research. Our analysis reveals four avenues: navigating the institutional environment, institutional bricolage, explanatory‐rhetorical skills and relations and engagement with state actors as critical elements in promoting inclusive and sustainable development. By highlighting how institutional entrepreneurs (IEs) leverage resources, build legitimacy and reconfigure formal and informal institutional arrangements, this study advances BoP literature and provides a roadmap for future empirical research for both practitioners and researchers focusing on emerging economies.

T he concept of institutional work (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006) offers an important new way to frame institutional analysis, connecting disparate (at least in the empirical literature) institutional processes such as creating, maintaining, and disrupting institutions. With its focus on practical action within organizational fields, institutional work is concerned with the status of the institution itself, rather than simply the impact of institutions on other actors in an organizational field (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). We contribute to the study of institutional work by theoretically and empirically examining the question of how an institution maintains its impact on an organizational field in the face of change and the emergence of alternative mechanisms for structuring a field. As such, we are working with a case of institutional work that Battilana and D'Aunno (this volume) describe as practical-evaluative agency aimed at maintaining institutions. Specifically, we examine this in the context of legitimating organizations – organizations such as accrediting bodies, regulatory organizations, and governance associations – established to maintain particular institutional arrangements. Individuals and organizations play an important role in organizational fields and the ongoing reproduction of institutions (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). Legitimating organizations maintain particular institutional arrangements by conferring legitimacy on other social actors and establishing mechanisms of compliance and membership (e.g. Lawrence, 2004). Although institutions represent a mechanism through which new processes, actors, and organizational forms can be integrated into a field (Greenwood, Suddaby & Hinings, 2002), legitimating organizations are often the public vehicle and symbolic touchstone for these institutional processes.

The Institutional Work of Payments for Ecosystem Services: Why the Mundane Should Matter

This paper aims to explain the ERP implementation in public sector agency in UAE. It explores the relationships between institutional logics and institutional work when a new accounting change is occurring in the field. This paper presents a case study of Community Development Authority (CDA). It draws on the institutional logics lens to inform Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System. It proposes that this system produces a duality of change. On one hand, this system is subject to institutional forces and institutional processes that set the rules of rationality. On the other hand, it is also an important embodiment of institutional commitments and serves to preserve these rules by constraining the actions of human agents. By examining a case of the CDA, the findings compare differentiated institutional work and institutional logics of ERP implementation, as well as analysis of mechanisms that led to different business outcomes. Through institutional analysis of interviews and documents and archival data, the study found that institutional logics (rules) based on correspondent institutional work (actions). The findings also show that CDA was able to align institutional works with its logics built in ERP, resulting in a success in the standard version. It identifies the success factors, software selection steps, and implementation procedures that are critical to a successful implementation of ERP system. The implementation of ERP confirms the practice variance between the institutional logics and situated logics as evident in Dubai Smart Government. This paper can be considered as a one of very few studies about the implementation of ERP system in the Middle East. This study has important implications for academic and practitioners alike by examining the interaction between institutional logics and institutional work when a new accounting change is taking place in the public sector.