Market Logic Research Articles

Institutional Logics: Motivating Action and Overcoming Resistance to Change

AbstractInstitutional logics are interrelated sets of cultural elements (norms, values, beliefs, and symbols) that help people and organizations make sense of their everyday activities and order those activities in time and space. In this paper, we describe the rise of a robust literature on institutional logics, which mostly focuses on Western societies. We then describe changes in Chinese society and economy over the past four decades, as it shifted from state-controlled planning and redistribution to market-mediated exchange. We detail how the institutional logics that guide Chinese firms have been transformed in the wake of the economic transition. The state logic, which developed in the Maoist era, valorizes equality, national community, and political stability. Although it is still in evidence, it has been partly supplanted by a market logic that encourages efficiency, competition, and property rights. But this market logic differs from the one that prevails in Western capitalist economies. The Chinese version of the market logic valorizes the central role that the state and the Communist Party continue to play in economic life. Therefore, in the Chinese version of the market logic, efficiency, competition, and property rights are tempered by a continued concern for political stability. We review and summarize the existing literature on institutional logics and Chinese firms, and then identify fruitful lines that future research could take.

Institutional logics and organizational filters: Differential responses to innovation and environmentalism in China’s cleantech sector

While the institutional logics perspective has been applied to explore various empirical contexts, less is known about how different organizations respond differentially to the pressures that are imposed by logics. We investigate how different organizational attributes moderate institutional logics differently by using a proprietary dataset of venture capital and private equity (VC/PE) investment in cleantech startups in China. We first delineate two distinct logics—market and proenvironmental—that shape VC/PE investment across different regions. Moreover, we identify two organizational attributes—state ownership and business model—which moderate the two logics differently. Whereas the business model of venture investment firms (VC vs. PE) effectively resonates with the market logic, state ownership fails to make a firm more attentive to either of the logics. We contribute to the logics perspective by complementing our understanding of organizational filters, showing the relationships between two distinct logics and cleantech investment, and extending the study of logics to authoritarian contexts.

Exploring the Evolutionary Boundaries of Community Business

Community businesses contribute to the economic and social well-being of the communities in which they operate. As a subset of hybrid organizations, community businesses have unique challenges and opportunities related to their community embeddedness. Our study adopts an institutional logic perspective to understand the evolutionary boundaries of community business, which we argue, are shaped by the interplay of tensions between the social, market, and community logics. While existing literature discusses institutional logics from a dichotomous angle, focusing mainly on the social and market logics, we argue that the introduction of a third logic (i.e., community logics) has ramifications for the evolution of hybrid organizations. The different trajectories may have implications for the social, community, and economic impact that organizations can have. We draw on 39 qualitative interviews to provide useful insights for policy and practice on supporting community businesses.

A configurational approach to political risks and institutional logics

Advancing our understanding of political risks is crucial for international management (IM) research and practice. This study addresses how multiple institutional logics that govern multinational enterprises (MNEs), as latent tensions of political risks, may work together for superior or inferior performance. Methodologically, we adopt a configurational approach to predict how varying state logic and market logic combinations affect performance in the context of internationalization among Chinese financial services firms. Employing fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), we identify a specific taxonomy of four political risk prototypes that lead to different performance outcomes. Overall, this study provides novel insights into political risk variations of internationalizing firms and links different institutional logic configurations with performance outcomes.

Neoliberal shifts and strategies of religious adaptation in post-war Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT Neoliberal shifts have brought about a centring of market logics and a new focus on the individual as consumer. Some religious groups are better able to adapt to these shifts than others, which reveals the changing role of religion in people’s daily lives. This article explores how the adaptive strategies of religious groups in response to neoliberalisation can trigger a reimagination of the role and value of religion in/to society. I illustrate these ideas through a comparative exploration of the way Buddhist élites and evangelical Christians engage with theology, tradition, and the market in Sri Lanka. While Buddhist élites struggle to overcome a sense of disjuncture in the way Buddhist principles relate to the market, evangelicals have always been more integrationist in their approach. Comparing these approaches reveals the extent to which neoliberalisation shapes the (trans)boundary modernities of religious leaders seeking to make the most of opportunities for expansion in post-war Sri Lanka.

“No Marketing on a Dead Planet”: Rethinking Marketing Education to Support a Restoration Economy

The threat of rapid and unpredictable climate change means we must urgently transition human lifestyles into a restoration economy, with a focus on restorative development instead of new development or conservation of old modes. To support that project, marketing educators must rethink their discipline and their responsibilities, challenging legacy marketing teaching and ‘business as usual’. To assess current practice, a global survey of 200 marketing faculty identified three clusters by climate consciousness: Engaged, Conflicted, and Traditionalist. Analysis of open-ended comments identified three themes: Felt need for change, Barriers to change, and Action to take. Building on these findings, we identify anti- and pro-restoration mechanisms in our disciplinary practice at societal, university, and individual level. We present those mechanisms in a new framework highlighting the discourses that reinforce and challenge engagement and agnosis. Agnosis is a socio-cultural and psychological phenomenon underlying the current collective failure to engage with climate change. We challenge colleagues to confront agnosis and offer individual, disciplinary, and institutional actions that support transition to net-zero carbon marketing logic.

Digital Marketing Logic, Mechanism, Strategy and Evaluation

Digital marketing is a marketing method based on digital technology and internet platforms. In recent years, with the popularity of mobile Internet and the development of social media, digital marketing has attracted more and more attention from enterprises and organizations and has become one of the important means to promote consumer purchases, enhance brand recognition and increase sales. This paper systematically expounds the underlying logic, mechanism, and strategy of digital marketing, reveals the important role of digital marketing in enterprise marketing, and provides theoretical and methodological support for digital marketing-related research. In addition, the paper proposes the selection and use of performance measurement tools and methods, and how digital marketing can optimize and enhance performance. At the same time, given the future development trend and problems of digital marketing, this paper puts forward some measures and suggestions, which provide a valuable reference for the practice of digital marketing in enterprises.

Celebrating 30 years of Organization: Epistemic pluralism, caring for our community and politics of hope

This editorial introduces the special issue celebrating 30 years of Organization. We first reflect on the continued relevance of our mission against the background of a management and organization studies field that is at once more open to the themes, epistemologies and methodologies we care about, and more dominated by a market logic and surveillance enforced through datafication technologies. Amidst this contradictory condition, we ask ourselves the important questions: What difference can we make and how do we best make it? We then renew our commitment to curating a space of epistemic pluralism, caring for our transnational, inclusive community and nourishing a political project of hope. For each of these ambitions, we mention the concrete actions we have been taking and those we plan to take in the near future. We conclude with an invitation to our readers, reviewers, board members and associate editors to participate in all activities ahead of us to build Organization further.

Entrepreneurial orientation, political ties, and corporate reputation: The moderating roles of institutional environments

In emerging markets, corporate reputation are important assets contributing to a firm’s competitive advantage. When building corporate reputation, emerging market firms (EMFs) must usually address interests related to the market and the government, which requires EMFs to embrace an entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and establish political ties (PTs). However, as EO follows a market logic while PTs follow a state logic, tensions between different institutional logics may occur and damage corporate reputation. This study examines how EO and PTs together influence corporate reputation and considers government intervention and religious intensity as boundary conditions. Empirical results of an analysis of survey data and secondary data reveal that EO and PTs together are negatively associated with corporate reputation, and this negative relationship is strengthened by government intervention but weakened by religious intensity. The research findings have significant implications for research and practice related to corporate reputation building in emerging markets.

The interplay of gender, motherhood, and the digital economy in China: exploring the experiences of urban mothers in WeChat businesses

In recent years, there has been tremendous growth in the e-commerce industry in China. This study focuses on the experiences of urban mothers who engage in e-commerce on the WeChat platform. Through in-depth interviews with 35 urban mothers as digital laborers on WeChat, our findings reveal that career disruptions due to childbirth and the lack of public support for domestic care work often drive urban mothers to engage in e-commerce. However, only a small number of highly educated mothers who strategically exemplify the practices of intensive motherhood ideology are able to generate sufficient income. This study sheds light on the commercialization of the online mother communities on WeChat and how these communities reinforce the intensive motherhood ideology. The separation of the public and private spheres in China after the economic reforms has resulted in urban mothers with young children engaging in precarious digital work. Meanwhile, the commercialization of the private sphere has blurred the boundaries between the public and private spheres with market logic, further perpetuating gender inequalities in contemporary China. Further research is needed to understand the impact of the digital economy on female digital labor in China, especially for mothers with young children.

Producing nature: Brand marketing of nature parks in Spain

In recent decades, the neoliberal conservation model has become the dominant global approach to nature conservation. The emergence of this paradigm has led to the imposition of a market logic, based on neoliberal philosophy, coinciding with a significant decrease in public investment in conservation. This, in turn, has brought about major transformations in the management of protected areas, resulting in a combination of private interests and initiatives for environmental protection. The complex current scenario is mobilizing a hegemonic discourse about nature in which socio-ecosystems are impacted by market strategies and the logic of competition. In this context, sustainable development is presented as a means for reconciling conservation goals with those of economic development. Branding in protected areas is presented as another option for the 'nature business' under the aegis of sustainable development. In this article we present a comparative analysis of how programs, brands and logos were created in the nature park networks of three regions in Spain (Andalusia, Catalonia and the Valencian Community). We examine the different strategies implemented by the respective territories to achieve their goals in environmental policymaking, by analyzing the realization of official programs. To conclude, we question whether neoliberal conservation may actually be reversing its own purposes: protecting in order to commercialize instead of conserving to protect.

Economies of resistance

ABSTRACT The social organisation of economic life plays a pivotal role in assembling many emerging and enduring health problems. Yet throughout the recent history of global health challenges, an emphasis on the influence of economic systems has frequently been sidelined in favour of research that interrogates the behavioural and/or cultural dimensions of these problems. The global crisis of antimicrobial resistance provides a striking example of this trend, with analysis frequently and increasingly focusing on behavioural or technological fixes – for example, the need for responsible use of remaining antimicrobial drugs, or for revived efforts to identify new antimicrobial agents – while at times glossing over the market logics that reproduce the problem itself. With a few notable exceptions, the economic headwinds that shape the current antimicrobial resistance (AMR) scene have been largely decentred in scholarly discussions. In this article, we argue for a critical sociology of economies of resistance, contributing to burgeoning efforts to understand how economic structures both shape the acceleration of AMR and undermine the development of drug and diagnostic solutions.

The discursive construction of organizational legitimacy in higher education: Multimodal discourse analysis on Chinese business schools

Applying a Multimodal Discourse Analysis framework, this study focuses on university websites to explore how organizational legitimacy is constructed through discursive strategies. Our findings show that under authoritative administrative logic and market logic, universities construct two organizational identities: policy followers and product/service suppliers, and use exemplification and authorization strategies respectively through visual discourse to legitimate the identities. To avoid potential conflicts between the legitimacy claims associated with these two identities, universities apply a decoupling strategy to isolate the two identities, along with both explicit and implicit expressions, through the intertextuality between visual and verbal discourses. The constitutive characteristics of universities’ website discourse reveal the complexity of Chinese institutional context in higher education field and the constitutive influence of the institutional background on organizational discourse and legitimation strategies.

Integrating competing institutional logics by benefit corporations: Challenges and practices

Drawing on institutional logics, this study empirically examines challenges faced by benefit corporations that are at the crossroads of competing logics—need-based social logic to do right by society and demand-based market logic to generate adequate profit for sustaining operations—and the practices that such organizations adopt to manage these challenges to maintain their hybrid nature. Examining 30 benefit corporations from the United States, this study finds multiple sets of primary challenges and empirically specifies that benefit corporations should integrate competing institutional logics by actively managing both internal dynamics in the organizations and external relations to be successful. The article further identifies benefit corporations that were unsuccessful in combining both logics, and thus, has implications for both the literature and management practice.

Unpacking the black box of ‘energy technology’: How abstraction and resource fungibility obscure ecologically unequal exchange

Transitions to low-carbon energy technologies and other forms of climate mitigation tend to involve disempowerment and environmental injustices of various kinds. This paper argues that such tendencies are inherent in the social rationale of technological systems promoted by the logic of the world market. The production and operation of technological artifacts are imbued with economic rationality and must not be conceptualised as distinct from the organisation of society. This is illustrated by the energy transition that occurred during the Industrial Revolution, in which the underlying incentives of ecologically unequal exchange and environmental load displacements were transmuted into seemingly neutral concerns of economic rationality and technological progress. The distributive dimensions of markets and technologies become apparent as we now aspire to abandon the fossil energy regime, revealing how our concepts of ‘energy’ and ‘technology’ may obscure global processes of appropriation of human labour time and natural space. Such processes are as insidiously inscribed in low-carbon energy technologies as in the fossil-fueled technologies that they are intended to replace. To identify such pervasive injustices as inherent in technologies rather than contextual contingencies requires an acknowledgement of the social essence of technical artifacts. This in turn requires a deep transdisciplinarity that links physics, industrial ecology, the philosophy of technology, social theory, world trade, and the history of ideas. Current efforts to transcend the distinction between the social and the material pervasively fail to integrate social theory and physical resource theory. Rather than investigate the social and ecological repercussions of technological systems, the focus of energy justice research should be to discover the tacit, distributive functions that are inscribed in the technologies to begin with.

Ideological foundations of capitalism and its organizational models: A study using popular management content on LinkedIn

AbstractThe paper investigates the ideological foundations of contemporary capitalism and its organizational models in Brazil. Our analysis considers three positions present in the literature: the thesis of the new spirit of capitalism; the literature about financialization and the shareholder value model; and the configuration of a managerial mode of domination. A content analysis was conducted to investigate normative business content from Brazilian “top voices” on the LinkedIn network. A total of 180 influential texts from 32 authors composed our corpus and were assessed based on an abductive approach that had as references the economies of worth model and a related framework for assessing the dynamic configuration of capitalism justifications. Results support the idea that contemporary capitalism is characterized in ideological terms by the fluidity of normative references restricting the market logic, configuring a complex or managerial mode of domination.

Thinking with <i>Bem Viver</i> across rural and urban Amazonia: Indigenous and Black spaces of resistance

In Brazil, Bem Viver recently arrived as a compelling counter-narrative to development's vision of land and labor as resources to be exploited. Bem Viver challenges the reductionism of land-as-resource, reinforces community autonomy, and entails reciprocity in relations with the nonhuman world. The purpose of this article is to extend conversations surrounding Bem Viver to the Brazilian Amazon state of Pará, primarily through asking whether the relational ethics of Bem Viver are active within current resistance movements focused on opposing neoliberal capitalism and racially-motivated dispossession. These resistance movements struggle for the maintenance of traditional relations while safeguarding socioecologies through territory. The cases we discuss draw upon our ethnographic work conducted within an Indigenous community in the Tapajós Basin and the Afro-Brazilian market Porto da Palha in urban Belém. We also consider whether Bem Viver opens the possibility of a post-political ecology framing of contestation over natural resources and place. Bem Viver is fundamentally relational and creates territorialities conflicting with market logics centered on financialization, individual accumulation, and private property. On the ground, Bem Viver as praxis shapes everyday practices sustaining place-based lifeways and determining material realities for the Indigenous and Black communities of the Tapajós and Belém regions of Pará.

Examination of the Decision to Work Remotely During the COVID-19 Pandemic Period in Terms of Corporate Legitimacy and Corporate Logic: Analysis of CEO Opinions

Although it has been applied in sectors such as marketing, telecommunications, and software for many years, the COVID-19 pandemic has temporarily caused many businesses to switch to remote working. Discussions about whether the remote working method is efficient or not continue. Another discussion is about whether the remote working method will be permanent. In this context, it is important to reveal which institutional logic and legitimacy expectations the companies have decided to work remotely. This study aims to deal with the background of remote working decisions of enterprises on the basis of institutional logic and legitimacy in line with the opinions of business CEOs. A qualitative research design was used in the research. Businesses included in the 2021 Forbes 2000 list were accepted as the research sample. The research data were obtained from the statements of CEOs to the press and from the reports of businesses. As a result of the analysis of the data, it has been revealed that the community and market logics are effective in the remote working decisions of CEOs. On the other hand, it was concluded that CEOs decided to work remotely with the expectation of moral and pragmatic legitimacy. This study is considered a guide for business managers who want to switch to remote working in the future. Keywords: Remote work, Institutional theory, Institutional logic, Legitimacy, COVID-19.

The Guiding Significance of Olympic Marketing on China's Sports Industry Business Promotion: What are the Enlightenment and Lessons from Historic Cases?

This article delves into the significance of Olympic marketing in advancing the Olympic movement and examines the challenges and prospects for the Chinese sports industry to employ cooperative marketing and promotion campaigns to bolster its national economy. The piece derives insights and tactics from the lessons and stratagems of prior Olympic events and sets forth strategic recommendations for Chinese stakeholders to participate in and collaboratively cultivate the sports economy. It underscores the paramount of relationship marketing, continual advancement, methodical marketing planning, and comprehension of the implications associated with Olympic marketing. Moreover, the article contemplates the relevance of service-dominant logic and social identity theory in sports marketing. Nevertheless, it also broaches apprehensions regarding the commercialization of the Olympic Games and the prioritization of financial gain over athlete welfare. Finally, the article advocates for a strategic blueprint to elevate China's sports industry by merging it with other sectors, advocating for healthy lifestyles, and amplifying domestic demand and consumption, while acknowledging the resource dependence theory and the intense competition among industry contenders.

A Study on the Influence of Sign Shaping on Consumption Intention Take Mixue Ice Cream & Tea for Example

With the arrival of new consumption era, the consumption of a commodity at this time is not limited to its own use value and exchange value. Symbol consumption has become a trend. In this case, enterprises shape their identity through precisely targeting the audience market to stimulate consumers to consume. Based on the phenomenon that Mixue Ice Cream & Tea, which is a tea drinking company, achieves its success in the Chinese market, this study explores the marketing logic behind it. The paper takes the sign value perception as the foundation connecting the self-concept with the product consistency to explain the change of consumers' consumption intention through the symbol value and value of the enterprise symbol shaped by it. In summary, it can be drawn from the research that the more matching between the shaped sign and the corporate image, the higher the consumer's consumption intention is. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the marketing strategy of Mixue Ice Cream & Tea, so as to provide suggestions for other local enterprises to enter the sinking market and improve the market share.