This article sets the idea of the 'institutional entrepreneur' in the context of the 'autonomous reflexive' as developed in the work of Margaret Archer. It argues that the latter notion provides a helpful approach to the issue of agency that has bedevilled the new institutionalist project. A detailed account, using the lens supplied by the notion of the autonomous reflexive, is given of the formation of Sir Andrew Barclay Walker, a pioneer of directly managed public houses. The article suggests that Walker used takenfor-granted practice transferred from elsewhere to develop his managerial systems. The importance of aspects of Walker's Scottish background, such as education and church governance is stressed. The account of agency supplied by Archer is seen to be a conception of agency that can inform the debate over the nature of institutional entrepreneurship.

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Alistair Mutch is Principal Lecturer in Information Management in NottinghamBusiness School at the Nottingham Trent University. He began academic life as a historian exploring rural life in Victorian England and then worked for British Telecommunications for ten years. He is interested in developing a critical realist perspective on the use of information, as well as in exploring the historical dimension of information use. He has published on, amongst other things, the current status and historical formation of welding, and the use of information by trades unions. He is currently working on a history of public house management in the United Kingdom, following a study of contemporary practices. AbstractPierre Bourdieu's concept of 'habitus' is frequently drawn upon in work on learning and knowledge in organisations. However, this use is much looser than Bourdieu's emphasis on habitus as generative structure. This tension is explored in an examination of the work of UK public house managers, using the notion of communities of practice. The issues that this raises about habitus are developed through a consideration of the work of Basil Bernstein. His work indicates the value of a concept that emphasises durable dispositions to act, but such a concept needs to be embedded in a relational conception of the agency-structure divide.

This paper advances a relational sociology of organization that seeks to address concerns over how organizational action is understood and situated. The approach outlined here is one which takes ontology seriously and requires transparency and consistency of position. It aims at causal explanation over description and/or prediction and seeks to avoid pure voluntarism or structural determinism in such explanation. We advocate relational analysis that recognizes and engages with connections within and across organization and with wider contexts. We develop this argument by briefly reviewing three promising approaches: relational pragmatism, the social theorizing of Bourdieu and critical realism, highlighting their ontological foundations, some similarities and differences and surfacing some methodological issues. Our purpose is to encourage analysis that explores the connections within and between perspectives and theoretical positions. We conclude that the development of the field of organization theory will benefit from self conscious and reflexive engagement and debate both within and across our various research positions and traditions only if such debates are conducted on the basis of holistic evaluations and interpretations that recognize (and value) difference.