Befriending Aliens: Institutional Complexity and Organizational Responses in Infrastructure Public–Private Partnerships

Abstract

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) must achieve legitimacy in the form of social acceptance from diverse audiences such as politicians, government agencies, private contractors, interest groups, and the general public. To advance understanding of such delicate balancing among multiple reference audiences, we adopt the lens of institutional theory to illustrate that PPPs inherently exhibit strong institutional complexity due to the presence of multiple institutional logics, making them organizationally challenging to manage. Our theoretical contribution includes the development of a set of propositions to form a conceptual model to explain not only why and how PPPs exhibit institutional complexity, but also how to respond to it through logic by combining strategies such as organizational hybridization.

Institutionalisation of sustainability in Indian megaprojects: an organisational field-based approach

“…Narayanan and Huemann (2021) explored how project managers in an Indian construction firm engaged their organisational field to address emerging economic challenges during project execution. Thus, one needs to understand the fields that create these demands in order to understand how actors participating in megaproject-field respond to multiple sustainability demands (Matinheikki et al, 2021). In line with the above argument, the following sections discuss three salient components of the megaproject field of sustainability namely actors, sustainability-enabling institutions and institutional logics (Scott, 1995).…”

“…Recently, research on the logics perspective has been widely advanced in organisational and management studies (Mahmood and Uddin, 2021;Uhrenholdt Madsen and Boch Waldorff, 2019). Studies have focussed on how organisations exhibit institutional complexity in the presence of conflicting logics in budgeting (Lepori and Montauti, 2020) and PPPs and how to respond to it (Matinheikki et al, 2021). Multiple logics are visible in society, where some are mutually incompatible, thus creating institutional contradictions (Friedland and Alford, 1991;Matinheikki et al, 2021).…”

“…Studies have focussed on how organisations exhibit institutional complexity in the presence of conflicting logics in budgeting (Lepori and Montauti, 2020) and PPPs and how to respond to it (Matinheikki et al, 2021). Multiple logics are visible in society, where some are mutually incompatible, thus creating institutional contradictions (Friedland and Alford, 1991;Matinheikki et al, 2021). In this line, megaprojects may face two or more contrasting institutional logics as they need to act under the call of multiple organisational actors.…”

“…Narayanan and Huemann (2021) explored how project managers in an Indian construction firm engaged their organisational field to address emerging economic challenges during project execution. Thus, one needs to understand the fields that create these demands in order to understand how actors participating in megaproject-field respond to multiple sustainability demands (Matinheikki et al. , 2021).…”

“…, 2021). Multiple logics are visible in society, where some are mutually incompatible, thus creating institutional contradictions (Friedland and Alford, 1991; Matinheikki et al. , 2021).…”