Topic outline

  • Unit 7: Institutional work and logics: Boundaries, practices, and temporality

    Institutional work (Zietsma and Lawrence, 2010; Granqvist and Gustafsson, 2016) refers to purposive actions with which actors aim to change institutions. Institutional logics are systems of assumptions, values, beliefs, rules, and practices (Smets et al., 2012).

     

    In this unit, you choose one of the three articles to read based on your preference. The first article is an empirical case-study on how change actors influenced industry practices and decision-making boundaries to renew the British Columbia coastal forest industry, and how boundaries and practices influence each other (Zietsma and Lawrence, 2010). The second article is an empirical case-study of how change actors can use and alter perceptions of time, such as urgency, windows of opportunity, and temporal patterns, to change institutional arrangements (Granqvist and Gustafsson, 2016). The third article presents a bottom-up perspective on institutional change. It is a case study on the collision of two institutional logics of English and German law firms that led to the improvisational creation of new practices and, consequently, how the changes in everyday work led to the formation of a hybrid logic (Smets et al., 2012).

     

    Article (academic, media or other)

    Why this article / what part of the article

    Zietsma, C., & Lawrence, T. B. (2010). Institutional Work in the Transformation of an Organizational Field: The Interplay of Boundary Work and Practice Work. Administrative Science Quarterly, 55(2), 189-221.

    Choose one of the three articles and read it. The article studies how we can influence boundaries, eg. of organizations and who gets to make decisions, to change industry practices.

    Granqvist, N., & Gustafsson, R. (2016). Temporal institutional work. Academy of Management Journal, 59(3), 1009-1035.

    Choose one of the three articles and read it. The article studies how we can alter and use temporal perceptions to change institutional arrangements.

    Smets, M., Morris, T. I. M., & Greenwood, R. (2012). From practice to field: A multilevel model of practice-driven institutional change. Academy of Management Journal, 55(4), 877-904.

    Choose one of the three articles and read it. This article studies how improvisational changes in everyday practices can alter institutional logics.

     

     

    • Folder icon
      Unit 7 Readings Folder
    • Forum icon
      Unit 7 Discussion forum
    • Turnitin Assignment 2 icon
      Unit 7 Individual essay Turnitin Assignment 2
◄ Previous section
Unit 6: Free spaces
Next section ►
Unit 8: Resources and coalition building