Polysemy and plural institutional logics

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ABSTRACT A growing number of organizations are hybrid organizations with ambiguous goals subjected to plural institutional logics. Many culture financiers not only need to handle an institutional logic of market and the democratic state, but also fulfill expectations from different fields of cultural production. This single case study on Swedish public sector financiers of art and culture focuses on the self-proclaimed most important target for such financing, namely to promote artistic quality. The article shows that plural institutional logics are instantiated in the main target of cultural financing. This in turn makes the target ambiguous and gives rise to several interpretations. The article introduces the concept of polysemy to the literature on institutional logics. It argues that one way of managing the contradictory expectations that arise from plural institutional logics is through polysemous targets; that is, by stating targets in words with multiple meaning in a semantic system.