Role Of Institutional Logics Research Articles

The Role of Institutional Logics in Shaping Sustainable Talent Management: A Comparative Study of Two South Korean Conglomerates

This research examines the evolution of human resource management (HRM) practices within Samsung and Lotte, two major South Korean conglomerates. Both companies have been profoundly influenced by the Japanese management paradigm, especially in areas like seniority-based promotion rooted in Confucian values. Drawing from institutional theory, the study elucidates how similar economic trajectories in South Korea and Japan fostered comparable institutional logics and pressures in HRM. However, as organizations navigate institutional shifts, their responses and resulting HRM adaptations can diverge. Utilizing a comparative approach through the lens of the institutional logic theory, key findings unveil as follows: (1) Samsung and Lotte’s HR practices exhibit a strong Japanese influence, highlighting cultural/historical context’s importance. (2) Despite similar pressures, the conglomerates developed distinct HR practices attributed to differing institutional logics. (3) Institutional logics play a pivotal role in shaping HRM and influencing organizational behavior. (4) Organizations adapt HR practices in response to institutional complexities, leading to practice divergence. (5) The study extends institutional theory’s application in understanding organizations’ varied responses to similar pressures. (6) Findings offer HR professionals insights on tailoring strategies based on contextual understanding. The study extends the application of institutional theory in deciphering varied organizational responses. Practically, it provides HR professionals guidance on contextually appropriate HRM strategies. Companies across Asia can leverage these insights to anticipate HR practice shifts and align them with evolving institutional frameworks.

Cultivating a sustainable and circular economy: The role of institutional logics in manufacturing companies

This paper aims to explore the institutional logic of manufacturing companies in the transition to a sustainable and circular economy. The paper follows abductive reasoning and uses a qualitative methodology encompassing primary data collected from 16 interviews with manufacturing companies and supplementary data from web-scan analysis, observation and 15 interviews with public institutions and environmental experts. We identify four specific co-existing logics of the circular economy of manufacturing companies and explain operating conditions of each logic. Compliance and commercial logics reflect instrumental thinking, while value chain and value creation logics are more based on integrative thinking. To illustrate opposites of instrumental thinking and integrative thinking, we propose an analytical framework of circular logics, that consists of three pillars, that is homogeneity vs heterogeneity, techno-centric vs system-centric perspectives, compliance vs ethical responsibility. The originality also relates to the prioritization among different logics.

Trust in interagency collaboration: The role of institutional logics and hybrid professionals

AbstractInteragency collaboration among social workers, teachers, and police is key to countering violent extremism in the Nordic countries by securing comprehensive assessment of cases of concern. Yet, previous research indicates that different institutional logics—perceptions of fundamental goals, strategies, and grounds for attention in efforts to counter violent extremists—exist across professions and challenge collaboration and trust building in practice. In this article, we empirically investigate these claims across social workers (n = 1,105), teachers (n = 1,387), and police (n = 1,053) in four Nordic countries: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. Using results from online surveys with professionals, we investigate the distribution of a ‘societal security logic’ and a ‘social care logic’ across professions and the degree to which these institutional logics translate into mutual trust. Through a comparison of institutional logics among practitioners with and without practical experience of interagency collaboration, we investigate whether and how institutional logics tend to mix and merge in hybrid organizational spaces. We conclude that differences in institutional logics across professions are differences in degree rather than in kind, but that such differences are important in shaping mutual trust and that experiences of interagency collaboration are correlated with a convergence toward a ‘social care logic’ conception of countering violent extremism.

Transforming the Australian agricultural biosecurity framework: The role of institutional logics

AbstractThe Australian government has transformed the national biosecurity framework by shifting from a quarantine to a shared responsibility approach. This reflects a move from centralised to network‐based governance. While network governance enables the development of private and public networks needed to enact a shared responsibility approach, it can sit in tension with this approach, which requires the sharing of risk and legitimacy across an array of non‐government actors. Further, little is known about how the beliefs and values of individuals involved in biosecurity decision‐making influence whether or how a shared responsibility approach is enacted. We use an institutional logics framework to investigate these issues and found that despite risk‐shifting and scale and efficiency logics underpinning a shared responsibility approach, a bureaucracy logic has remained dominant. While a dominant bureaucracy logic can enable a shared responsibility approach by providing clear guidelines around biosecurity compliance, it can also create barriers by creating ambiguity, or increasing reliance of actors on government in the event of a biosecurity outbreak. It can also reflect shadows of hierarchy in which governments moving to network‐based governance are either not ready to share power or seek to retain authority over the direction of their policy intention.Points for practitioners Enacting a shared responsibility approach is subject to an array of challenges. However, little is known about how the beliefs and values of individuals involved in biosecurity decision‐making influence whether or how a shared responsibility approach is enacted. Problems can arise with implementation of a shared responsibility approach particularly related to the different and conflicting ways in which decision makers can interpret and understand a policy intention. Despite efforts from public and private partners to work together, a shared responsibility approach is dominated by a bureaucracy logic. This can provide clear guidelines for actors around compliance but can also create further dependence on government in the event of a biosecurity outbreak.

The role of institutional logics during participation in urban processes and projects: Insights from a comparative analysis of upgrading fifteen informal settlements in Kenya

The academic literature largely acknowledges participation as a key condition for the successful upgrading of informal settlements. However, how individual participative actions of different actor groups and reactions of dwellers combine to influence project outcomes of upgrading processes has not been studied. This article posits that different combinations of presence or absence of collaborative interactions between dwellers and other actors will decisively predict the success and failure of projects. Specifically, we argue that interactions between different groups of implementers and dwellers are conditioned by distinctive value systems—institutional logics—, which provide specific challenges to establishing collaborative interactions with dwellers as the actors conduct their roles. We identify sufficient combinations of participative actions that may lead to successful upgrading using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) on 15 informal settlements in Kenya's secondary towns that were recently upgraded. Our findings indicate that participation has to consider a multiplicity of actors, who are guided by different logics; it has to span over the whole implementation cycle. It also has to deal reflexively with the issue of representation of the community. This extends the understanding of participation to a perspective that emphasizes the capabilities of implementers to enact collaborative relationships by bridging between their own and the community's institutional logic.

On the Role of Institutional Logics in Legitimacy Evaluations: The Effects of Pricing and CSR Signals on Organizational Legitimacy.

The relationship between institutional logics and organizational legitimacy remains largely unaddressed in organizational theory and management research. We explore how individual evaluators primed with a particular institutional logic react to organizational signals sent by a firm's product/service pricing and by its engagement in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. In three experimental studies, we identify how the activation of a market logic or a family logic in evaluators' minds moderates the effect of pricing and CSR engagement signals on their judgments of legitimacy of a firm, as well as on their behavioral intentions. An unexpected finding from our study was that, while participants primed with the family logic reacted positively to a CSR engagement signal sent by the firm but remained indifferent to a market-based premium-pricing signal, those primed with the market logic reacted positively to both premium-pricing and CSR engagement signals, suggesting that CSR engagement forms part of their understanding of the market logic.

Transformational Ability of Energy Network Companies: The Role of Institutional Logics and Boundary Spanners

Energy network companies play a vital role in energy transitions. The transformational ability of these companies influences the process of energy transitions and the effectiveness of policies in this domain. This study shows the need for managers of network companies as well as scholars and policy makers operating in the midst of energy transitions to acknowledge the importance and value of boundary spanners in improving the transformation ability of these companies to play their role in facilitating energy transitions. Evidence comes from an in-depth analysis of an energy network company in the Netherlands. Our findings show that the transformation ability of energy network companies depends on various instances of boundary spanning as these organizations address differing or conflicting intra- and inter-organizational institutional logics when contributing to an energy transition. In the context of energy transitions, inter-organizational boundary spanning generally demands more resources and attention than the spanning of intra-organizational boundaries. Additionally, intra-organizational boundaries affect inter-organizational relationships, particularly in the policy arena. Our findings indicate that to carry out the type of institutional change that an energy transition requires, more attention and resources should be dedicated to intra-organizational boundary spanning, even as the need to connect external stakeholders increases.

The Willingness of PVCs to Invest GVCs Backed Ventures: The Role of Institutional Logics

It is important to evaluate whether public direct intervention in the form of governmental venture capitalists (GVCs) have bridged the equity gap by stimulating more investments from private venture capitalists (PVCs). However, empirical evidence for this relationship is inconclusive. Drawing on institutional logic perspective and organizational tensions literature, we hypothesize that PVCs are less likely to invest in a venture whose prior round is backed by GVCs, owing to the conflicts or tensions between PVCs’ professional logic and GVCs’ state logic. To substantiate our argument, we further examine two moderators that revise either GVCs’ or PVCs’ conformity to their logics: limited partnership (LP) and VC status. We hypothesize that the negative relationship between GVCs’ investments and follow-on PVCs’ investments will be weakened when the GVC is less complied with the state logic by taking the form of LP and delegating the investment decisions to professional fund managers. In contrast, the negative relationship will be strengthened when the follow-on PVC holds a superior status in the VC industry which reinforces its professional logic. The results based on a sample of 2,680 VC investment deals rendered strong support to our hypotheses. Our study adds to the literature by providing a nuanced perspective of logic tensions to explain why public direct intervention in entrepreneurial finance may impede follow-on investments from private sectors.

Forming mixed-type inter-organisational relationships in Sub-Saharan Africa: The role of institutional logics, social identities and institutionally embedded agency

Neo-liberal reforms in Sub-Saharan African countries, under pressure from international donors, have increased the number of mixed-type inter-organisational relationships in their public sectors. However, existing accounting studies often ignore the role of institutional environments and institutionally embedded agents in shaping these relationships. This is an important omission in Sub-Saharan Africa given its institutional complexity. This paper reports a case study of a national public pension fund in a Sub-Saharan African country which invests in real estate developments through mixed-type inter-organisational relationships. We show how it develops new inter-organisational management controls by selectively coupling its private sector and public sector logics at the organisational level, while at the individual level institutionally embedded organisational actors, drawing on social identities which enact societal-level logics, can impede (and possibly subvert) these controls. For this purpose, we develop a conceptual framework by drawing on the institutional logics perspective, and especially microfoundations provided by Thornton and her colleagues, which recognises institutional logics at various levels and highlights the importance of social identity and embedded agency. We argue that, rather than implementing the ‘best practices’ from developed countries, research should look for African solutions which build on and adapt traditional institutional logics and practices.

Shifting logics: limitations on the journey from ‘state’ to ‘market’ logic in UK higher education

Our study of UK higher education institutions (HEIs) offers insights into the role of institutional logics in the adoption of organisational practices – specifically outsourcing. We identify two logics prevalent within HEIs: a public service ‘state logic’ and a ‘market logic’. While adherence to the market logic supports commercial-based practices such as outsourcing, organisations enact competing logics in complex ways. Outsourcing is mainly limited to peripheral activities segmented from the core while a nascent cooperative solution is emerging as HEIs co-opt practices and discourse of outsourcing to justify hybrid relationships that marry competing logics in a process of selective coupling.

The Role of Institutional Logics in Board Interlock Formation

The international context has important implications for board interlock network dynamics. Drawing from an institutional logics perspective, we construct a theoretical framework linking the dynamic...

The Role of Institutional Logics in Shaping Architecture Governance: A Case Study

Departing from a longitudinal case study at a Scandinavian telecom, we seek to explore the shaping of IT governance mechanisms related to enterprise architecture efforts - here referred to as architecture governance. While empirically studying this subdomain of IT governance, we also contribute to IT governance literature in general. IT governance is often described as a management prerogative, however, using institutional logics as a theoretical lens and sensitizing device, we show how different logics emerged over time and influenced how the organization governed its architecture. These findings are discussed in relation to current practice and theory on both architecture and IT governance. Generally, the findings show how architecture governance is shaped through a complex, contextual and social process beyond rational, managerial decision-making. Finally, we propose that institutional logics can become embedded into governance practices. In this way, logics that are no longer dominant can still influence the way IT is governed.

The Role of Institutional Logics in the Design of E-Governance Systems

ABSTRACT E-governance is premised on the notion that information technology can be used to reconfigure relations among various government departments as well as between governments and other stakeholders such as the private sector and civil society. This study uses social construction of technology (SCOT) and institutional theory as the lenses through which to deconstruct the process involved in using information technology to enhance transparency and accountability of an urban local government in India. It highlights how diverse stakeholders, by tapping into existing notions of good governance, articulated the project as resolving the need for timely, accurate, and structured information for decision-making. This problem definition led to the recognition that fundamental to transforming how the urban local government works was a reform in its financial management systems.

Who Gets to Decide? The Role of Institutional Logics in Shaping Stakeholder Politics and Insurgency

Who Gets to Decide? The Role of Institutional Logics in Shaping Stakeholder Politics and Insurgency