Inter-institutional System Research Articles

Institutional complexity and consumer wellbeing: Navigating the conflicting logics of religion, state, and market during the COVID-19 pandemic

Institutional complexity arises when multiple institutional logics prescribe divergent and incompatible behaviors. Studies show that exposure to contradictory prescriptions of multiple logics may trigger identity tensions, strategic challenges, and legitimacy problems. We add to this research stream by exploring the implications of the incompatibility between religion and other logics on consumer wellbeing. Extant research reports a generally positive effect of religion on wellbeing but limits the analytical attention to the individual effects of religiosity. Viewing religion as part of an inter-institutional system, we seek to understand why religion and other institutional logics might come into a conflictual relationship with each other and destabilize wellbeing. We find that critical events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, change the relative centrality of logics and prompt individuals to engage in incompatible behaviors. We also discuss how consumers manage the sudden and unexpected institutional complexity they face and seek to restore their wellbeing.

Committed Actors, Institutional Complexity, and Pathways to Compromise: The Emergence of Islamic Banking in Germany

AbstractThe formation of the first Islamic bank in Germany in 2015 came with considerable tensions at the interface of the religious logic, on the one hand, and the state logic, on the other. With the Islamic religious logic being novel to the German field of banking and finance, innovative templates were established to deal effectively with the resulting tensions and conflicts. Drawing on qualitative data, we investigate how the bank, with its strong commitment to Islam, navigated such novel institutional complexity and the challenges stemming from the jurisdictional overlap. We identify four distinct compromise mechanisms in this institutionally complex situation, in which a committed actor prioritizes one logic over another: explaining, convincing, conceding and suspending. Importantly, as options, these mechanisms are situated in a cascading order of preference for the focal actor. More generally, our research posits that in any encounter between institutional logics in which the specific instantiation of a logic stems from a foreign interinstitutional system, the resulting novel institutional complexity may necessitate the development of innovative templates which, at the same time, may imply ‘stretching’ an institutional logic and, in consequence, impact the compatibility of its jurisdictional claims.

How Do Technological Systems Define Who War Victims Are?

AbstractIn a range of peace process scenarios, the expert’s knowledge has become a fundamental tool for generating information systems as a mechanism for the storage and circulation of data. These information artifacts are supposed to faithfully document situations of human rights violations and contribute to the design of public policy and the construction of collective memory. Following Latour’s (1993) original coinage of the term coproduction, this paper analyzes how the Inter-Institutional System of Information for Justice and Peace (SIIJYP)1 was designed to define victims of war and means of reparation from the State in Colombia. From an actor network theory perspective, we explain how victimizers become the main beneficiaries of the application of the SIIJYP. To comprehend this unintended social impact of the technological artifact and how it becomes an artifact that functions as an aseptic mediator of the historical-judicial truth, and the policy of transitional justice, we examine the relations between human and nonhuman actors, how information is collected, organized, hierarchized, and negotiated, as well as the consequences of the technical and legal construction of the notion of victims of war.

ИНСТИТУТ СПОРТА В СИСТЕМЕ СОЦИАЛЬНОЙ ИНТЕГРАЦИИ МИГРАНТОВ РОССИИ

The article is devoted to the sociological substantiation of the Institute of Sports as a regulator in the system of social integration of migrants in Russia. The purpose of the study is to identify real sports practices of migrants, as well as scientific evidence of the consideration of the Institute of sports as a regulator in the system of social integration of migrants in Russia. The study was conducted in 2022 in the Belgorod region by the method of a questionnaire survey of grants (multi-stage sampling). As a result of the study, it was revealed that the social institute of sports does not realize its social integration resource in practice, although it has great potential. The components of the function of the Institute of sports in the system of social integration of migrants in Russia are found: recreational, socio-psychological, unifying, health-improving, aesthetic. Migrants are dominated by passive, rather than active ways of spending their free time. At the same time, sports are in the last positions among other leisure activities. In modern Russian conditions, it seems expedient to include the Institute of Sports in a single interinstitutional system that performs the function of long-term soft and effective regulation of the system of social integration of migrants. It is advisable to include state, municipal, private, as well as public sports organizations in this activity.

Community in Organizational Research: A Review and an Institutional Logics Perspective

More than a decade ago, Thornton and colleagues added community to the inter-institutional system and argued that the community logic shapes individual and organizational behavior, determines organizing principles, and influences community–organization relationships. In justifying this addition and defining the ideal type, they drew mostly upon the literature on local communities and organizations. However, the increasing relevance of other types of communities to organization studies necessitates a re-examination and further specification of this framework. This article starts with a review of 172 papers from highly ranked organization and management journals over the last 30 years and summarizes insights on four types of communities for which discussion has flourished: communities of place, of practice, of users, and of firms. This is followed by pattern matching to explore whether these four types follow the initial description of the community logic. We find four variants of the community logic, one for each type of community. We show that all the reviewed types organize around a common boundary, which yields a new definition of the community logic. This commonality also offers scope for comparative research and reconceptualization of community–organization relationships. Furthermore, by specifying the organizing principles that vary, we extend previous research and explicate the main underpinnings of community organizing. The paper ends by suggesting avenues for future research that further embrace an institutional logics perspective on communities.

Institutions and institutional changes: aquatic food production in Central Luzon, Philippines

Aquaculture is the most rapidly growing food production sector globally. In certain coastal social-ecological systems, this has resulted in significant changes and sustainability challenges. In particular, coastal environments which used to support only capture fisheries are becoming sites for brackish water aquaculture production; this impacts the sustainability of aquatic food production. Sustainability challenges associated with aquaculture expansion and intensification necessitate a contextually rooted understanding of institutions and institutional changes which can be used as an informed basis for leveraging institutions to achieve desirable sustainability outcomes in the aquatic food sector. This research used a qualitative empirical case study involving in-depth interviews, participant observation, and analysis of institutional documents in the region of Central Luzon, Philippines. It applied the inter-institutional systems concept which considers multiple institutions with distinct but linked purposes and functions in the societal spheres of state, market, and civil society. The study found that aquaculture emerged as an important livelihood because of rice farmers’ need to adapt to saltwater intrusion into what were formerly rice farms. It grew into an industry due to developments in the availability and accessibility of inputs such as fingerlings and feeds. This process was also driven by the high demand and high profitability of fish farming at the time. Regulatory institutions have not adequately adapted to protect the environment. Market institutions adapted but the changes mostly benefited consignacions (middlemen) and large-scale players. However, organised groups of collaborating smallholder fishers and fish farmers are helping to address the disadvantages they face.

Institutional logic of corruption

Our aim was to verify the ‘institutional logics’ of corruption through the discursive patterns of managers. We conducted an exploratory survey using a qualitative-quantitative method. The interviews were submitted to content analysis, using the Atlas.TI software and the questionnaire was applied by SurveyMonkey. As a methodological contribution, four categories and levels for analyzing the logic of corruption were constructed: Individual, Organization, Networks, and Interinstitutional System. We infer that understanding the institutional logic of corruption can promote a transformation of corrupt behavior and an institutional change by individual cognition that can lead to practical change in society.

Institutional logics and practice variations in sustainability reporting: evidence from an emerging field

PurposeThis paper aims to deepen the understanding of logics and practice variation in sustainability reporting in an emerging field.Design/methodology/approachThis paper adopts the institutional logics perspective and its conceptualization of society as an inter-institutional system as a theoretical lens to understand reasons for the presence of and variation in sustainability reporting. The empirical findings are based on analysis of 28 semi-structured interviews with significant social actors, and extensive documentary evidence focusing on eight companies pioneering sustainability reporting in Pakistan.FindingsThis paper confirms the presence of multiple co-existing logics in sustainability practices and lack of a dominant logic. Sustainability reporting practices are underpinned by a combination of market and corporate (business logics), state (regulatory logics), professional (transparency logics) and community (responsibility logics) institutional orders. It is argued that institutional heterogeneity (variations in logics) drives the diversity of motivations for and variations in sustainability reporting practices.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper offers a deeper theoretical explanation of how various logics dominate sustainability reporting in a field where the institutionalization of practice is in its infancy.Practical implicationsUnderstanding the conditions that influence the logics of corporate decision-makers will provide new insights into what motivates firms to engage in sustainability reporting. A broader understanding of sustainability reporting in emerging fields will foster its intended use to increase transparency, accountability and sustainability performance.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to relatively scarce but growing empirical research on emerging fields. Its major contribution lies in its focus on how multiple and conflicting institutional logics are instantiated at the organizational level, leading to wide practice variations, especially in an emerging field. In doing so, it advances the institutional logics debate on practice variations within the accounting literature.

How Information Technology Matters in Societal Change: An Affordance-Based Institutional Perspective

While there has been much work on the relationship between information technology (IT) and organizational change, there has been limited research that theorizes the relationship between IT and societal change. This paper draws on institutional theory, in particular institutional logics, to develop a model of IT and societal change, which we argue is critical in an era of large-scale digital transformation. Our approach is based on a view of society as an interinstitutional system, reflecting the multiplicity of logics at the societal level. We conceptualize societal change as shifts in the multiplicity of logics, with a focus on changes in the levels of centrality and compatibility. Our model relates these changes to the materiality of technology through the concept of IT affordances. We propose three mechanisms (sensegiving, translating, and decoupling) through which IT affordances become elements of societal change. We identify three corresponding carriers through which IT affordances gain scale and stability (objects, networks, and platforms). We discuss the implications of our theoretical developments for future research on IT and societal change.

Relating rationality to context: interinstitutional complexity and embedded individual agency within industrial training in the UK tableware sector

ABSTRACT The central contribution of this paper lies in showing a need to consider the complexity of interinstitutional systems, thereby more effectively relate rationality to context. Drawing on an institutional logics perspective, it presents a study of workplace training in a particular industrial sector in the UK: ceramic production. While identifying a vicious circle in the form of, what can be termed, a ‘high-quality/low-(formal-)skill’ system state, rather than simply privileging structure over action, findings show embedded individual agency. Besides being directed by goals, interests and self-seeking behaviour, a dominant logic for senior management personnel towards technology and home-based production was guided by issues of social identity and identification. ‘Nested’ in different opportunities and constraints presented at the levels of organizations and institutions, this individual-level logic was translated into not one, but two alternative corporate logics towards existing state-led intermediate-level workforce training arrangements. Both perpetuated a low-(formal-)skill situation in the sector.

The Potential for Plurality and Prevalence of the Religious Institutional Logic

Religion is a significant social force on organizational practice yet has been relatively underexamined in organization theory. In this article, I assert that the institutional logics perspective is especially conducive to examine the macrolevel role of religion for organizations. The notion of the religious logic offers conceptual means to explain the significance of religion, its interrelationship with other institutional orders, and embeddedness into and impact across interinstitutional systems. I argue for intrainstitutional logic plurality and show that specifically the intrareligious logic plurality has been rather disregarded with a relative focus on Christianity and a geographical focus on “the West.” Next, I propose the concept of interinstitutional logic prevalence and show that the religious logic in particular may act as a metalogic due to its potential for uniqueness, ultimacy, and ubiquity. Through illustrations from Islamic Finance and Entrepreneurship, I exemplify implications of logic plurality and prevalence for organizations and societies.

Family values and inter-institutional governance of strategic decision making in Indian family firms

In this paper we use new venture creation in Indian family firms to explore the family firm as an inter-institutional system. We argue that in societies where the traditional family dominates social and economic life, the relationship between the two institutions, the firm and the family, is managed via inter-institutional logics. These inter-institutional logics help reconcile the tensions that often arise in the family firms during strategic decision making. We use archival and interview data on 36 new ventures in eight Indian family firms to identify these logics. Our analysis shows that the interaction between firm and family institutional logics in Indian family firms generates four sub-logics: economic, expertise, reputation and attachment. These four logics are used to frame and screen new venture opportunities and justify resource allocation.

THE PREVALENCE OF RISK FACTORS FOR CHRONIC NON-COMMUNICABLE DISEASES IN STUDENT POPULATION

The review focuses on the results of epidemiological and clinical trials, which witness high prevalence of risk factors for chronic noncommunicable diseases in student population, their common combination and potentiating negative impact on the health and academic success of students. The results of literature data analysis underlies an aim for further long-term population epidemiologic studies, trends and age tracking of the main risk factors for chronic noncommunicable diseases in student population, with properly organized interinstitutional system of medical-social follow-up of the studying and research for differentiated prevention technologies.

Rapid on‐site evaluation of EBUS‐TBNA specimens of lymph nodes: Comparative analysis and recommendations for standardization

There is no widely accepted rapid on-site evaluation (ROSE) reporting system for endobronchial ultrasound-guided transbronchial needle aspiration. At the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, ROSE reporting was unstructured. The goal was to evaluate, compare, and improve upon 2 structured approaches proposed in the literature. One hundred eighteen consecutive nodal aspirates were retrospectively reviewed by a pathology resident and a staff cytopathologist, both of whom were blinded to the original unstructured readings. Each reviewer interpreted every specimen with 2 different structured criteria proposed in the literature: criteria from the University of Minnesota (the Minnesota [MN] criteria) and criteria from the North Shore Long Island Jewish Health System (the New York [NY] criteria). The data allowed a comparison of the original unstructured ROSE system with the MN and NY scoring schemes and the final diagnosis. Original on-site adequacy (OSA) had been assessed at 96%. Three cases were false-adequate according to the original unstructured approach; these had been called adequate on site, but a subsequent slide review including cell blocks did not show definite nodal tissue. OSA dropped to 86% with the MN criteria and to 85% with the NY criteria. No false-adequate on-site diagnoses would have been rendered with the application of either structured criteria. There were no significant differences between the MN and NY criteria with respect to the determination of OSA. An assessment of ease of application favored the NY criteria. With respect to diagnostic categories, each of the systems (MN and NY) was felt to have a category of value not used by the other system. A standardized intra- and inter-institutional system for ROSE reporting is needed. On the basis of comparative analyses and consensus, modifications to prior criteria have been proposed in the hope of approaching this goal.

Special Issue: Enhancing Sustainable Performance in Organizational and Inter-Institutional Systems

Sustainability is not just for Christmas… it’s for life. Sustainable solutions, whether sought in terms of business strategies, social policies, or the exploitation of natural resources have to serve organizations and communities in the long term, sometimes very long term, as well as the short term. Static analysis is unlikely to be able to evaluate candidate solutions fully, and is more likely to focus on the short-term future to the detriment of the longer-term. Sustainable solutions are more likely to be developed from studies based on deep analysis using systems approaches, and from system dynamics (SD) approaches in particular.

The institutional logics perspective: a new approach to culture, structure, and process

1. Introduction to the Institutional Logics Perspective 2. Precursors to the Institutional Logics Perspective 3. Defining the Inter-institutional System 4. The Emergence, Stability and Change of the Inter-institutional System 5. Micro-Foundations of Institutional Logics 6. The Dynamics of Organizational Practices and Identities 7. The Emergence and Evolution of Field-Level Logics 8. Implications for Future Research

Inter-institutional Communications and Process Innovation: Inter-institutional System and Collaborative Work Process

The purpose of this research is to provide a contextual analysis of the introduction of an inter-institutional system (IIS). An exploratory case study was conducted to assess the consequences of implementing a videoconferencing system in three public institutions. Respondents reported radically different experiences with the IIS-videoconference system. Activity theory is used as a framework for analyzing the organizational context at the three settings and exploring consequences of use of the innovation. Using activity theory, I could explain a range of human activity and innovation underlying the inter-organizational work process. This research suggests that deficiencies in actors’ activity of the process limit the value of IIS process. This study concludes that IIS design and use are innovation process of context trying to include human activity into IIS system.

Dentro ou fora essa escola, onde está?

Este artigo discute implicações que o relacionamento entre escola e pais/ comunidade exerce sobre o desenvolvimento moral dos alunos. A partir do referen. cia! teórico da psicopedagogia institucional psicanaliticamente orientada, supõe-se que os pais e a comunidade podem funcionar como terceiro elemento na dinâmica inconsciente da escola. Considerando-se dois modelos de relacionamento (o inclusivo e o excludente), a análise de duas escolas revela que a escola inclusiva - que consegue envolver pais e comunidade e permanece dentro da rede interinstitucional - lida melhor com os conllitos intersubjetivos e oferece um ambiente mais propício para o desenvolvimento da autonomia moral. Com a escola excludente, ocorre o contrário.

Toward a science for and of the people: promoting civil society through the application of developmental science.

Applied developmental science (ADS) is scholarship that seeks to advance the integration of developmental research with actions-policies and programs-that promote positive development and/or enhance the life chances of vulnerable children and families. Through this integration ADS may become a major means to foster a science for and of the people. It may serve as an exemplar of the means through which scholarship, with community collaboration, may contribute directly to social justice. In so doing, ADS helps shift the model of amelioration, prevention, or optimization research from one demonstrating efficacy to one promoting outreach. When this contribution occurs in the context of university-community partnerships, ADS may serve also as a model of how higher education may engage policy makers, contribute to community capacity to sustain valued programs, and maintain and perpetuate civil society through knowledge-based, interinstitutional systems change.