Farah Kodeih

Organizations face institutional complexity whenever they confront incompatible prescriptions from multiple institutional logics. Our interest is in how plural institutional logics, refracted through field-level structures and processes, are experienced within organizations and how organizations respond to such complexity. We draw on a variety of cognate literatures to discuss the field-level structural characteristics and organizational attributes that shape institutional complexity. We then explore the repertoire of strategies and structures that organizations deploy to cope with multiple, competing demands. The analytical framework developed herein is presented to guide future scholarship in the systematic analysis of institutional complexity. We conclude by suggesting avenues for future research.

Organizations face institutional complexity whenever they confront incompatible prescriptions from multiple institutional logics. Our interest is in how plural institutional logics, refracted through field-level structures and processes, are experienced within organizations and how organizations respond to such complexity. We draw on a variety of cognate literatures to discuss the field-level structural characteristics and organizational attributes that shape institutional complexity. We then explore the repertoire of strategies and structures that organizations deploy to cope with multiple, competing demands. The analytical framework developed herein is presented to guide future scholarship in the systematic analysis of institutional complexity. We conclude by suggesting avenues for future research.

How organizations cope with multiple and sometimes conflicting institutional demands is an increasingly familiar yet little understood question. This paper examines how four French business schools responded to demands that they internationalize their management education whilst retaining their traditional identities. We trace the role played by field-level actors in pushing and articulating competing logics and the importance of institutional and organizational identity in how organizations respond. By highlighting the role of identity aspirations we show that what matters is not how an organization sees itself—i.e., what it is—but how it wants to see itself—i.e., what it wishes to become. Finally, we unpack and explain why status differences across organizations affect the nature of the opportunities that are perceived and the scale and format of the responses that are implemented.

The first edition of this Handbook appeared in 2008. 1 Its contents and introductory chapter covered the evolution of institutional thinking from 1977 up to that date. In the introductory chapter of the second edition, we will not repeat nor reinterpret these three decades, but rather expand on what we see as important directions and developments in institutional theory since then and suggest what we regard as the most promising future research avenues. Most of the themes identified in the first edition continued to be elaborated into the fourth decade, and the foundational concepts, notably legitimacy (see Deephouse, Bundy, Tost, & Suchman, Chapter 1) and organizational field (see Wooten & Hoffman, Chapter 2), remained core components of conceptual and empirical work. Both these chapters show the continuing elaboration and centrality of these concepts. However, in mapping the developments of this fourth decade, we find two overarching yet interrelated themes (which form Parts II and III) to have become particularly central during the post-2008 era: first, a renewed interest in the complexity of relationships between organizations and their institutional context; and, second, a focus on processes and practices through which institutions are created, enacted, or altered, or through which they erode and are eventually deinstitutionalized. Running through both themes are conversations around the concepts of institutional logics and institutional work and related theorizing on the nature of agency within institutional theorizing. In addition, this fourth decade saw the emergence of several new conversations that elaborated and deepened institutional theorizing. Much is going on in the big 'institutional tent'! However, if there is one area that distinguishes research over the last decade from earlier trends and that promises to redirect institutional scholarship, it is the attention being given to outcomes and consequences of institutions. Whereas earlier work 2008: 1025). FCEs are not an entirely new idea -they are found in earlier studies -but Lampel and Meyer correctly suggest that giving more focus to FCEs should enhance our understanding of field dynamics because they are integral to 'the growth and evolution of institutional, organizational, and professional fields' (2008: 1025). As Hinings et al. (Chapter 6) point out, the need to understand the nature and outcomes of FCEs for field structuration has, over the past few years, become more fully appreciated and various forms of FCEs have been studied (e.g., Garud, 2008; Hardy & Maguire, 2010; Moeran & Pedersen, 2011). They are recognized as important vehicles of field-level institutional governance that can profoundly shape how fields emerge, evolve, are displaced or sustained. They are also fundamental to how interests and privileges are asserted and concealed (Amis, Munir, & Mair, Chapter 27; Palmer, Chapter 28). Nonetheless, questions remain. Schssler, Rling and Wittneben (2014), for example, argue that the role of FCEs in field structuration varies according to the relative maturity of the field. At the early moments of field evolution, these authors suggest, FCEs provide the basis for trust and openness and hence can assist change. As fields mature, FCEs become less open because powerful actors enter the discourseand thus FCEs prevent change. We also have much to learn about less obvious FCEs.

The experience of temporariness is increasingly prevalent across the world, both for transient populations such as refugees and in work life characterized by precarious employment relationships. In this article, we examine how local institutional work can shape people’s experience of indeterminate temporariness and mitigate its pernicious effects. Our qualitative, inductive study is set in refugee camps in Lebanon, where indeterminate temporariness created an oppressive experience of time among Syrian refugees. We document the efforts of an NGO to help refugees rebuild meaningful lives by developing small-scale entrepreneurial ventures – efforts we conceptualize as ‘sheltering work’. Our analysis points to the potential for sheltering work to alleviate the oppressive effects of temporariness by bounding, containing, and structuring individuals’ day-to-day lives. Although sheltering work reshaped refugees’ experience of time, it did not eradicate the oppressive effects of indeterminate temporariness; instead, oppressive and reclaimed experiences of time coexisted, with individuals shifting between them. Our study theorizes sheltering work as a potent form of modest, local institutional work in the face of immutable institutions, and elaborates how individual experiences of time influence embedded agency.