Responding to Institutional Complexity: Explaining the Difference between Individuals

Abstract

Our work aims at investigating how and why individual actors differ in their responses to institutional complexity. We do so by carrying out a qualitative study, in which we conducted two year of participant-observation and interviewed 58 employees who experienced multiple institutional logics at work on a daily basis in a global sales organization. We rely on the micro-factors of emotion, the individuals’ relationship with institutional context and salient identity to study how these factors trigger individual differences. We found that in the midst of institutional complexity, micro-level actors undergo four types of emotional combinations: comfortable and willing to act, uncomfortable and willing to act, uncomfortable and unable to act, and comfortable and no need to act. They invoke two types of salient identity: identify oneself with one single logic and identify oneself as between multiple logics. Depending on the combination of emotional reactions and salient identities, individuals may adopt one or more of the following responses: avoid multiple logics, force own logic, accommodate to others’ logics, moderate between logics, and surpass complexity of multiple logics. Our contribution is two-fold. First, we delineate how and why individual actors differ in their responses to the contradiction between institutional arrangements. Second, we bring to light the dynamic and complexity of individual agency in institutional complexity, thereby contributing to enhancing the understanding of the link between the macro and micro levels of institutions.