Institutional Pluralism, Organizations, and Actors - Wiley Online Library

Sociology Compass 9/6 (2015): 464–476, 10.1111/soc4.12269

Institutional Pluralism, Organizations, and Actors: A Review Kyoung-Hee Yu* UNSW Business School

Abstract

The institutional logics perspective holds the promise of delivering where neo-institutionalist theory has disappointed – the ability to address key societal problems such as inequality, social discrimination, and economic insecurity – a promise that, as of yet, has been unrealized. In this review, I provide an overview of the body of work within the institutional logics perspective that addresses the co-existence of multiple institutional logics inf luencing identities, values, cognitive frameworks, and practices – institutional pluralism. I demonstrate how pluralism diverges from conventional neo-institutionalist theory in its view of institutional fields as heterogeneous spaces. I then review the implications for organizations and social actors responding to multiple logics in the institutional environment. In the discussion section, I argue that the study of pluralism, in acknowledging human agency, politics, and collective mobilization, opens the door for creative resolutions to societal problems hitherto overlooked in neo-institutional theory. Despite the promise, I address key research areas that remain unresolved or under-addressed in the institutional pluralism perspective.

“It is the contradictory relationships that exist between different institutional orders that allow for individual and organizational autonomy.” (Thornton et al. 2012: 45)

The institutional logics perspective (Friedland and Alford 1991; Thornton 2004; Thornton and Ocasio 1999; Thornton et al. 2012) has provided a much needed impetus to neoinstitutional theory with its emphasis on potential contradictions and conf lict between institutional systems and its proposition that rationality is construed differently across institutional orders. In contradistinction to the conventional framework in neo-institutionalism whose central inquiry was concerned with how organizations become similar in order to be seen as legitimate within the institutional environment (Meyer and Rowan 1977), the logics perspective emphasizes the heterogeneous nature of institutional environments and the ability of organizations, groups, and individuals to respond to such an environment. The institutional logics perspective holds the promise of delivering where neo-institutionalist theory has disappointed – the ability to address key societal problems such as inequality, social discrimination, and economic insecurity – a promise that, as of yet, has been unrealized. While the co-existence of multiple competing institutional logics was theorized as transitional and temporary in early deliberations of the logics perspective (Thornton and Ocasio 1999), recent developments have proposed that pluralism and complexity are enduring characteristics of institutional fields today. Conf licting institutional demands are seen as a product of the way modern societies and modern organizations have evolved (Scott and Meyer 1991). Mechanisms that ensure the durability and ubiquity of pluralism include globalization, which exposes actors to local, regional, and global institutional pressures, the rise of specialized institutions engendering fragmentation in institutional fields, the trend toward decentralization, as well as occupational differentiation and increasing workforce diversity (Pache and Santos 2010: 471). As a result, organizations are increasingly required to operate in fields that encompass diverse stakeholders, and become accountable to several credos, © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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such as having to meet both social objectives as well as efficiency imperatives (O’Mahony and Bechky 2008). In this review, I provide an overview of the body of work within the institutional logics perspective that addresses the co-existence of multiple institutional logics inf luencing identities, values, and practices – institutional pluralism. I demonstrate how pluralism diverges from earlier institutional theory in its view of institutional fields as heterogeneous spaces. I then review the implications for organizations and social actors responding to multiple logics in the institutional environment. In the discussion section, I argue that the study of pluralism, in acknowledging human agency, politics, and collective mobilization, opens the door for creative resolutions to societal problems hitherto overlooked in neo-institutional theory (Hirsch and Lounsbury 2015; Munir 2014; Suddaby 2015). Despite the promise, I address key research areas that remain unresolved or under-addressed in the institutional pluralism perspective. Institutional logics and pluralism Institutional logics are shared cultural symbols and material practices as well as principles of organization and action that provide criteria for appropriateness, cognitive frameworks, vocabularies of motive, and sense of self to members of an institutional field (Friedland and Alford 1991; Thornton 2002, 2004; Thornton et al. 2012). Logics are embodied in practices, and sustained and reproduced by culture as well as political struggles (Thornton and Ocasio 2008: 101). Institutional pluralism is defined as the presence of more than one logic in the environment, generating multiple institutionally given identities and mythologies that legitimate organizations, individuals, and groups (Kraatz and Block 2008: 244). Early research on logics, while acknowledging the possibility that competing and/or conf licting logics can simultaneously inf luence institutional fields, emphasized the dominance of a single logic at a time in a given field (e.g. Thornton 2002; Thornton et al. 2005). But in a recent elaboration of the logics perspective, Thornton et al. (2012) embed pluralism in their theory of the inter-institutional system. Each institutional order within the inter-institutional system, including the family, religion, the state, the market, profession, corporation, and the community, is partially autonomous from one another, presenting cultural heterogeneity as a central tenet of the institutional logics perspective (Thornton et al. 2012: 60). Organizations, and their forms, practices and identities, vary across the institutional orders (Thornton et al. 2012:67). Thornton et al. (2012) distinguish the institutional logics perspective from the traditional focus on isomorphism in neo-institutionalist theory, and separate this perspective from the latter on several dimensions. The isomorphism school, whose lineage the authors trace to Meyer and Rowan (1977), DiMaggio and Powell (1983), and DiMaggio (1991), was preoccupied with rationalization as a legitimizing mechanism. Rationality was conceived as manifesting in organizations as the acquisition of formal bureaucratic structures and processes. DiMaggio and Powell (1983) built on and refined Meyer and Rowan’s (1977) notion that organizations adopt formal structures in an effort to obtain legitimacy by theorizing the mechanisms driving isomorphism, the diffusion of dominant organizational forms and practices from center to periphery. Since then, various scholars contributed to theorizing isomorphism as a by-product of the increasing rationalization across societies (Meyer et al. 1997; Weber et al., 2009). Although they recognized regulatory, professional, and competitive pressures as distinct sources of isomorphism, and therefore provided a precursor to the logics perspective, DiMaggio and Powell (1983) did not theorize the drivers of isomorphism as separate institutional orders. DiMaggio and Powell (1983) also emphasized taken-for-granted cognitive bases for cultural inf luence, thereby depicting organizations and individuals as receptors of an externalized culture. In doing so, they moved away from the normative foundations of old institutionalism, which recognized the capacity of organizations and individuals to ref lect upon their institutional environment, © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.


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and, internalizing culture, ultimately generate their own practices (Hirsch and Lounsbury 1997; Thornton et al. 2012: 31). Despite his efforts to integrate neo-institutional theory with elements of old institutionalism by including normative pressures and later emotions in his “institutional pillars” framework, Scott (1995, 2001, 2008) did not break away from the central focus on isomorphism. Friedland and Alford (1991), on whose foundations the institutional logics perspective builds, explicitly criticized DiMaggio and Powell’s (1983) theory of isomorphism, “arguing instead that fields should have tremendous potential to produce and highlight contradictions, conf lict, and autonomy of practices and forms” (Thornton et al. 2012: 44). Since then, an abundance of scholars have helped develop and advance the logics perspective. The key premises of the logics perspective as exposited by Thornton et al. (2012) are that identities, values, and interests are embedded in institutional logics (hence, the “duality” of agency and structure), that institutions are composed of both material and symbolic elements, that institutions are historically contingent, and that institutions are enacted at multiple levels. The existence of multiple and potentially contrasting logics rising from the partial autonomy of different institutional orders – i.e. pluralism – enables actors and organizations to conceptualize and act on alternative views of rationality (Thornton et al. 2012: 7). Pluralism in logics was first identified in key empirical studies (e.g. Lounsbury 2007; Purdy and Gray 2009) and promptly formalized into a theoretical framework by Greenwood et al. (2011) and Pache and Santos (2010) in seminal work that sought to identify specific challenges of competing institutional demands for organizations. While recognizing that actions taken by organizations and individuals interact recursively with field level dynamics (Purdy and Gray 2009: 372) and macro societal logics (Thornton 2004), for the purposes of this essay, I focus on two key levels at which plural logics operate – the organization and the actor ( groups and individuals). Organizational responses to pluralism Work in the area of organizational responses to pluralism has been inf luenced by Selznickian institutionalism (Selznick 1949, 1957, 1996), which portrayed organizations simultaneously as filters of institutional demands and as entities whose internal dynamics in turn affect institution processes (Greenwood et al. 2011; Pache and Santos 2010: 459) (see Figure 1). Institutional pressures permeate organizations through external actors who promote institutional demands across the field, or internally through hiring and filtering processes (Pache and Santos 2010: 459). While formal theories have been built on organizational response types and corresponding levels of internal conf lict, recent studies taking a process-based approach have indicated that organizational responses are likely to vary over time, and involve ongoing negotiations, adaptation, and creative blending. I review both approaches below. Organizational attributes as filters Initial theorizing sought to identify the factors that condition organizational strategies and structures in dealing with pluralism. Greenwood et al. (2011) and Pache and Santos (2010) advanced a theoretical framework composing of relationships between characteristics of institutional fields and those of organizational “filters” through which institutional demands permeate organizations (Greenwood et al. 2011; Pache and Santos 2010) (see Figure 1). Among field level determinants of organizational responses, these authors developed the concept of institutional complexity, which refers to pluralism of logics as well as the extent to which logics are seen as incompatible. I use the term complexity in this review to refer to incompatibility of more than one logic, and pluralism more generally to refer to the co-existence of multiple logics. Other © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.



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Figure 1 Model of organizational responses to institutional pluralism. Source: Greenwood, Raynard, Kodeih, Micelotta and Lounsbury, 2011.

field level determinants of organizational responses include fragmentation (measured in terms of the degree of coordination available in member organizations), and field centralization (level of hierarchy) (Greenwood et al. 2011: 337–8; Pache and Santos 2010: 457; 459–60). Pache and Santos (2010) proposed that the combined effect of a highly fragmented and moderately centralized field rendered the highest level of complexity for organizations and hence the greatest challenge. Key organizational filters of the pluralistic environment are structure, ownership, and identity. Organizational structure determines the ties that organizational members have with external referents who channel institutional demands into the organization (Greenwood et al. 2011: 343). Ownership – e.g. whether private or public, shareholder or stakeholder owned – and governance both relate to intra-organizational distributions of power and the ability of organizational members to inf luence the rest of the organization. Lastly, organizational identity includes institutionally prescribed identities (Greenwood et al. 2011: 347). A recent integration of this line of work by Besharov and Smith (2014) has re-framed compatibility and centrality as concepts pertaining to how organizations experience pluralism rather than solely as traits of institutional fields. Their insights include that organizational actors inf luence how multiple logics are put into practice within organizations (Besharov and Smith, 2014: 366), and that the extent to which logics co-exist in organizations can change over time (Besharov and Smith, 2014: 367–70). Besharov and Smith’s (2014: 371) typology of logic pluralism within organizations (see Figure 2) indicates that situations characterized by high levels of conf lict are limited to cases where pluralism is central to the organization’s functioning and logics are incompatible. While a disproportionate number of empirical studies have documented high organizational conf lict resulting from logic pluralism, the authors argue that relatively compatible logics that assimilate – such as in the case of peripheral logics supporting the core logic – or blend into each other may be the norm (Besharov and Smith, 2014: 371, 375). Organizational responses to pluralism have been conceptualized primarily in terms of strategies and structures (Greenwood et al. 2011), as well as, recently, organizational identity (Battilana and Lee 2014). Pache and Santos’ (2010) framework of strategic organizational responses to pluralism extended Oliver’s (1991) model of organizational responses to institutional environments (the latter implicitly assumed institutional environments to be homogenous). Pache and Santos (2010: 469) argue that the representation of institutional logics among groups © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.



Figure 2 Types of logic pluralism within organizations. Source: Besharov and Smith, 2014.

of organizational members and the balance of power among groups are key antecedents predicting how the organization will respond. They maintain that organizations are likely to avoid or defy pressures to accommodate multiple logics when there is a clearly dominant internal group in favor of one of the competing logics, and when competing logics inf luence the means employed to achieve organizational goals but not goals themselves (Pache and Santos 2010: 465–6). Following Pache and Santos’ (2010) argument, a micro finance organization is likely to defy the finance logic and adhere to the logic of social good as long as environmental pressures for efficiency affect how they manage loans rather than their ultimate goal of poverty alleviation. When pluralism affects the designation of goals (as opposed to means) and when power is equally distributed among groups adhering to competing logics, to avoid potential paralysis or breakup, organizations will attempt to achieve a compromise between logics (Pache and Santos 2010: 468). Structural responses to pluralism were initially conceived in terms of hybridization by Greenwood et al. (2011), who distinguished between “blended” – where different logics are combined or layered – or “structurally differentiated” hybrids, where the logics are compartmentalized into separate organizational units (Greenwood et al. 2011: 354). In their recent review, however, Battilana and Lee (2014) widened the concept of hybridity and argued that it must be understood not only in terms of structures, but also in terms of identities and institutional logics. Their concept of “hybrid organizing” explicitly recognizes that the combination of multiple logics, identities, and structures co-occur in hybrid organizations (Creed et al. 2010; Lok 2010; Pedersen and Dobbin 2006). Relatedly, Pache and Santos (2013) found that hybrid organizations selectively coupled logics, indicating an alternative response to blending and compartmentalizing.

Process-based studies While the literature reviewed above generally implies that organizations wittingly choose their responses to pluralism, the purposiveness of organizational responses has been debated (Greenwood et al. 2011: 352). Empirical findings have suggested that outcomes under pluralism cannot always be foreseen because they are products of complex negotiations that sometimes produce unintended consequences (Kraatz and Block 2008; Yu 2013). A process and interaction-based approach recognizes that logics and organizational templates can be innovated © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.



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on or altered by actors that interpret situational needs over time ( Jay 2013; Yu 2013; Zietsma and Lawrence 2010). Kraatz and Block (2008) called attention to organizational adaptation, acknowledging the capacity for organizations to integrate multiple logics into a coherent organizational identity through the exercise of leadership (Pache and Santos 2010: 456). Drawing on Selznickian institutionalism (Selznick 1949, 1957) as well as symbolic interactionism (Stryker and Burke 2000), Kraatz and Block (2008: 7) encouraged viewing the organization as an entity with a ref lective “selfhood.” In this formulation, compartmentalization is problematic because of the need to validate identities and obtain commitment from organizational members (Kraatz and Block 2008: 11). Recognizing that intra-organizational dynamics are an important source of practice variation and an endogenous source of change in logics (Thornton et al. 2012: 137), several calls have been made for research on the generative potential of organizations (Battilana and Lee 2014; Jay 2013; Kraatz and Block 2008). Empirical studies have shown that organizational politics, adaptive cooperation among groups adhering to different logics, and the symbiotic relationship between practice and theorization can lead to novel arrangements for accommodating pluralism in organizations. Yu (2013) documented the negotiated orders (Hallett and Ventresca 2006) that emerged in the process of integrating competing logics in an American union. Yu’s (2013) finding that political contestation against the social movement logic prompted proponents to graft a centralized bureaucratic structure to a formerly decentralized union suggests that intra-organizational politics can generate greater heterogeneity. Further research is required to examine such unintended consequences of organizational responses to institutional pluralism (Kraatz and Block 2008). Similarly, Smets and Jarzabkowski (2013: 1294) showed how the merger of two law firms, one following the UK model of legal practice and the other following a German one, resulted in an unplanned hybrid model, which emerged through “gradual practice adaptations”. As Jones and her colleagues’ work on the rise of modern architecture ( Jones and Massa 2013; Jones et al. 2012) shows, competition between multiple logics manifests itself in both symbolic (e.g. theories and narratives) and material (e.g. practice) forms – more research is needed on how the two elements interact to produce logic change. Lastly, as Battilana and Lee (2014: 421) point out for the case of hybrids in social enterprise, future research “will need to address the question of if, and how, organizational members come to understand the social enterprise in its own right, rather than as a tenuous composite of business and charity.” We know little about how organizations transcend combinatory hybrid identities (Battilana and Dorado 2010; Lok 2010) and come to acquire their own “selfhood” (Kraatz and Block 2008). Group and individual responses to pluralism While the institutional logics perspective recognizes individual and collective agency, it also stresses that actors interpret institutional logics in a culturally embedded way (Thornton et al. 2012: 79–80). Thornton et al. (2012: 80) argued that individual actions are characterized by bounded intentionality because purposive actions ref lect social identity, value-laden goals, and cognitive limitations. Actions are inf luenced by individual identities, goals, and cognition, as well as the accessibility and availability of logics to actors (Thornton et al. 2012: 90–1). Empirical studies have shown that actors use logics creatively as tools to “direct attention, order considerations, and shape decisions” instead of merely as post-hoc justifications (McPherson and Sauder 2013: 177); however, the exercise of choice and discretion is restricted by social position and identity (Meyer and Höllerer 2010; Zietsma and Lawrence 2010). While institutional pluralism has largely overcome neo-institutionalism’s neglect of agency, as I argue below, who can respond to pluralism and what happens to those who cannot are questions that remain overlooked. The literature has been focused on the professions and skilled occupations, © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.



remaining silent about the fact that large numbers of people may not possess the social skills to maneuver institutional pluralism. Research on how professions and their work practices have been inf luenced by pluralism has demonstrated the inter-connected nature of professionalization projects and the ebb and f low of institutional logics over time. Multiple logics inf luence the professionalization project (DiMaggio 1991; Lounsbury 2007), professional practices (Goodrick and Reay 2011), changes in professional education (Dunn and Jones 2010), and organizational forms delivering professional services (Reay and Hinings 2005, 2009). Lounsbury (2007) showed how competing logics in the mutual fund industry, fueled by the professionalization project of money managers, enabled practice variation. Fund managers in Boston and New York were equally keen to advance their professional interests, yet those in Boston were inf luenced by the trustee logic, which emphasized preservation of wealth, as opposed to those in New York who internalized short-term performance logic. This led to lasting differences in how these managers engaged professional money management firms. In contrast to most studies examining competition between two logics, Goodrick and Reay (2011) revealed that “constellations” of four different logics, each pertaining to the profession, market, corporation and state, affected work practice in the pharmaceutical profession over a period of 150 years. They showed that logics are composed of decomposable parts that can be recombined in different ways; for example, in the same era, the professional logic manifest its inf luence in pharmaceutical education in the form of professional standards, while the corporate logic was dominant in how individual pharmaceutical practices were managed (Goodrick and Reay 2011: 379–80). Dunn and Jones’ (2010) longitudinal study of logics in medical education suggests that in every profession, tensions between logics of expertise and logics of practice may be utilized and manipulated by actors external and internal to the profession. They showed how the relative inf luence of the logic of science and logic of care over medical education responded to external pressures from interest groups representing the federal government, the public, and managed care corporations. Lastly, Reay and Hinings (2009) observed that medical professionals collaborated with administrators in the aftermath of Alberta’s healthcare reforms that introduced the managerial logic into a profession that was formerly governed by the professional logic “by developing localized structures and systems that enabled day-to-day work” (Reay and Hinings 2009: 630). Culturally sophisticated individuals whose backgrounds enable them to develop deep knowledge in more than one institutional order and motivate them to combine logics across institutional orders are deemed most likely to create changes in logics (Thornton et al. 2012:103–125). Thornton et al. (2012: 124) refer to these select individuals as cultural entrepreneurs who found new organizational forms combining logics from different institutional orders – such as in the case of the founders of Prentice-Hall publishers, who blended industrial, market, and family logics to produce an organizational culture that, despite its size and scale, treated employees as family (Thornton et al. 2012:114–7). These individuals rely on the power of persuasion, by theorizing (Greenwood et al. 2002; Strang and Meyer 1993; Tolbert and Zucker 1996), framing, and constructing narratives: “individuals and organizations act as cultural entrepreneurs by using stories and rhetorical strategies to manipulate cultural symbols to obtain resources and to change practices” (Thornton et al. 2012: 124). Social actors are theorized in the logics perspective as exhibiting situational independence to logics. Actors are able to apply their own judgments to situations instead of blindly following prescriptions from institutional logics, combine logics creatively, and loosely couple or decouple their actions from their identities (Thornton et al. 2012: 58). Binder (2007) showed that contrary to what theories focused on organization-wide responses to complexity might predict, sub-units in a housing organization varied in their practices because actors creatively blended competing logics with local meanings and personal values. She revealed pockets of discretion © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.



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and autonomy that enabled actors to mix cultural repertories (Swidler 1986), allowing them to find compatibility in logics that were seemingly incompatible (Binder 2007: 556). Similarly, McPherson and Sauder (2013) studied the use of multiple logics in a drug court and found that actors adapted logics to use as tools in addressing situational demands. As they state, “Logics are extra-individual phenomena, but their construct, transmission, and effectiveness depend to a great degree on the actors who employ them.” (McPherson and Sauder 2013: 180). Actors sometimes veered from the logic most suited to their institutional backgrounds to demonstrate willingness to collaborate with professionals from other institutional backgrounds, and to ensure that the court functioned efficiently (McPherson and Sauder 2013: 182). For example, the authors show that state attorneys invoked the criminal punishment logic less often than one would expect given their institutional backgrounds; instead, they routinely “hijacked” the rehabilitation logic, normally espoused by clinical experts, and the community accountability logic, the logic of criminal defense lawyers, to resolve bottlenecks. Reay and Hinings (2009: 360) document that groups of professionals who saw no other way to accomplish their tasks than through pragmatic collaborations did so by separating identities from tasks. Similarly, Smets and Jarzabkowski (2013: 1300–1) cited “pressures to get the work done” as the reason why lawyers from two different cultural traditions forged creative solutions to accommodate differences. On the other hand, studies also demonstrate that actors’ responses are guided by social position, identities, and collective interests, and that creating new meaning necessitates ref lexive spaces that allow boundary expansion. This ref lects the duality of agency and structure that the institutional logics approach is based on (Thornton et al. 2012: 6–10). Hence, in Zietsma and Lawrence’s (2010: 214) study of competing logics affecting the Canadian forestry sector, actors resolved contested practices by extending existing boundaries: “actors may innovate not by stepping outside of institutional inf luences but, rather, by constructing new boundaries that shield them from the sanctions to which they would otherwise be exposed.” The idea of “free spaces” (Rao and Dutta 2012) in social movements has referred to safe spaces where challengers formulate mobilization strategies; in organizations, “relational spaces” (Kellogg 2009) have been found to allow actors to experiment with new practices. Meyer and Höllerer (2010) illustrated how actors in Austria created spaces to contend the increasingly dominant institutional logic of shareholder value and to generate heterogeneity in meaning and preserve practices adhering to the logic of corporatism, which has historically shaped corporate activity in that country. However, actors’ abilities to maneuver depended on their social positions and their identities, so that, for example, whether they were politicians or consultants inf luenced their rhetorical strategies (Meyer and Höllerer 2010: 1241–2). Discussion: (the yet) undelivered promises in institutional pluralism The institutional logics perspective breaks with neo-institutionalism’s focus on legitimization and homogeneity, proposing multiple sources of rationality and legitimacy provided by different institutional orders. Because it explicitly recognizes contradictions and conf lict in the institutional environment and acknowledges that organizations and social actors possess interpretive and creative capabilities in which to recombine logics and generate new practices, it holds the promise of addressing key social problems that have long been sidestepped in institutional theory and organizational studies more broadly. However, this promise remains as yet undelivered. In some cases, the theoretical foundations have been laid out, yet these have not been taken up as research projects. In others, such as in the area of how ordinary actors can act collectively, the theory is relatively mute. The pluralism perspective demonstrates that examining intra-organizational dynamics is crucial to understanding field level heterogeneity in organizational form. How organizations © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.



instantiate different logics within them – for example, whether logics are blended or whether peripheral logics are assimilated into dominant ones – have larger consequences at the field level (Besharov and Smith, 2014: 375). Although by now, a substantial number of studies have examined intra-organizational processes, more research is needed on how logic instantiation is negotiated among organizational members. Yu’s (2013) work shows that politics can have unintended consequences for instantiating multiple logics, and that resistance can trigger repression that prompts organizations to draw on the institutional environment for additional cultural tools. Furthermore, a key blind spot is the failure to address broader consequences of organizational responses. What does it mean for us as a society that a social enterprise ultimately “drifts,” failing to sustain the social charity logic and behaving over time as a commercial organization would (Battilana and Lee 2014)? We thus do not know what “externalities” – outcomes for non organizational members such as stakeholders and the general public – organizational responses to multiple contending logics produce. Nor do we know who can impact the negotiations over negative and positive externalities. The silence to this question is in part owed to the fact that few studies have connected organizational responses to field level outcomes. Hence, we know more about, for example, the struggles of micro finance organizations to sustain the social justice aspect of their mandate, than about how these difficulties translate to the institutionalization of micro finance as a whole. If cultural entrepreneurship is responsible for founding hybrid organizational forms, what type of purposive action is needed to sustain hybridity? How can organizational actors inf luence regulatory mechanisms and trigger collective momentum in favor of social enterprises? A related concern is the reluctance of the institutional logics perspective to identify losers and winners in situations of institutional complexity. Are some groups “freer” from the binds of multiple institutional logics by virtue of better endowments or capabilities to maneuver the institutional environment? The logics perspective has privileged collective identities over interests; consequently, it has been largely silent about the distributive outcomes of pluralism. It is well known that wealthier, more highly educated people are less likely to be inf luenced by fast food culture, which contributes to a widening health gap between income groups (Asch et al. 2006; Marmot et al. 2008). Consumerism, increasingly affecting large populations in developing countries, can make low-income workers more vulnerable by creating a false belief in their own capacity to pay (Isaksen and Roper 2008). Furthermore, lack of stability and security puts key supporting institutions – such as marriage, education, and religion – out of reach of lowincome populations (Appleton and Song 2008; Harknett and Kuperberg 2011). Within organizations, complexity may alter the existing power balance if some actors are better equipped to command the new environment than others. Extant theories work from existing configurations of representation and power, and thus are limited in their capacity to theorize dynamic and shifting balances. Actors’ potential to ameliorate the skewed outcomes of pluralism heightened by globalization and the financialization of the economy lies in their capacity to mobilize cultural resources; yet, the continued focus on skilled occupations as key institutional actors has detracted the institutional logics perspective from theorizing this potential. To be fair, the logics perspective does identify collective mobilization as a mechanism for endogenous change in institutional logics (Lounsbury and Crumley 2007: 163–4; Thornton et al. 2012). Building on social movement theory, it also recognizes frames and narratives as mediums for constructing field-level institutional logics (Thornton et al. 2012: 152–6). However, we do not know how ordinary actors, and not only those in advantageous social positions, can strategically draw on multiple logics to mobilize political support, and to prevent the dominance of the market logic over all others. This calls for better theorizing of collaboration and negotiation – including failed attempts – as well as emergent negotiated orders (Hallett and Ventresca 2006) that serve as way © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.



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stations to fully institutionalized logics. Scholarship on social movements, for example, has emphasized the need for networks and communities that support activism even during times when movements have abated (Corrigall-Brown 2012; Staggenborg 1998). A recognition that change occurs in fits and starts, gets aborted, and begets unintended consequences is needed to better appreciate the process by which actors and organizations respond to pluralism. Emergent movements today that militate against the oppression of the market logic and the governments that unilaterally implement it invoke responsibility to community (Yu 2014) – they dovetail with scholarly observations within institutional theory of the ascendance of the community logic in reaction to the challenges of global market forces (Greenwood et al. 2009; Scott 2008; Thornton et al. 2012: 68–72). Yet the wildcat strikes of Chinese factory workers, protests against Brazil’s World Cup, agitations against the collusion of the government with local drug lords in Mexico, and the collective momentum that led to the Arab Spring don’t automatically institutionalize into changes in logics. The impact of such social movements on rhetoric and practice, and therefore on existing logics, needs to be better theorized. Finally, we need to better understand and be able to theorize how and why institutional orders, which the logics perspective tends to depict as autonomous and stable, themselves are changing, and how this affects the logics that derive from them. Despite the proclamation that institutions and institutional logics are historically contingent (Thornton et al. 2012: 12–13), emphasis in this line of work has been on the co-existence and combination of different logics, rather than the transformation of “whole” institutional logics rooted in venerated institutional orders. Thornton et al. (2012: 44), for example, rely almost exclusively on pluralism as the source of alternative rationalities, stating “without multiple institutional logics available to provide alternative meanings, deviance would be unthinkable for individuals.” Endogenous change within logics merits more attention than it has been bestowed. A related issue is a relative neglect of the importance of actors’ commitments to logics. For example, the proposed reforms in the Roman Catholic Church driven by Pope Francis may fundamentally alter what we understand as the institutional logic of religion (see Creed et al. 2010 for a description). This depends in large part on whether resistance to reforms is successful, and the relative strength of commitment that actors demonstrate to reforms and to the opposition thereof, respectively. Commitments to logics can vary (Kraatz and Block 2008), yet we know little about how the strength of value commitments to logics affect organizational and individual responses to pluralism (Kraatz et al. 2010). As Greenwood et al. (2009) study of corporate downsizing in Spain revealed, the ability of institutional orders such as the state, the community, and the family, to enlist commitment from actors can vary across sectors and regions. But to date, the emphasis has been on social ties and power differences (e.g. Pache and Santos 2010; Besharov and Smith, 2014), not on commitment: this may indicate that despite the rhetoric of bringing back the normative roots of institutional theory, there remains some hesitancy in incorporating it fully into theoretical frameworks. Short Biography Kyoung-Hee Yu is a Senior Lecturer at the UNSW Business School. Kyoung-Hee’s research has focused on institutional and organizational change processes affecting work and employment. Her recent work has examined organizational responses to pressures from social movements, the mobility of work under globalization, and comparative employment relations in the Asian context. Note * Correspondence address: Kyoung-Hee Yu, UNSW Business School. E-mail: [email protected] © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.



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