Enacting a Constellation of Logics: How Transferred Practices Are Recontextualized in a Global Organization

Abstract

We explore how new practices are transferred across locations in a global organization. The company we studied strove to infuse more user-centered innovation and quicker, more agile delivery of software into their development teams. The practices for doing so were crafted in the United States and then transferred to China and India. Over a period of 20 months, we observed how three practices were transferred to and enacted at each location. Our findings suggest a constellation of logics, which varied by site and by practice, molded the particular recontextualizations at each site. We contribute to a deeper understanding of how employees experience and respond to the transfer of practices from abroad by proposing that a constellation of logics guides recontextualization of meaning as well as action. Our empirical work and analysis also raises numerous questions about the effects of the recontextualizations on performance, what makes a particular logic or constellation of logics salient for a particular practice at a particular time, the stability and malleability of these logics, and what happens in global collaborations when different logics are invoked at different locations.

Institutional Complexity and Organizational Change: An Open Polity Perspective

“…Activation of incompatibilities also occurs when an institutional logic is transferred from one subunit to other subunits traditionally grounded in a contrasting logic (Kostova, 1999;Värlander, Hinds, Thomason, Pearce, & Altman, 2016). For instance, Heinze and Weber (2016) studied how in academic hospitals institutional intrapreneurs attempted to spread the logic of integrative medicine from their own subunit to other parts of the organization traditionally governed by a traditional Western medicine logic.…”

“…This can be accomplished by organization-wide common policies or guidelines inspired by the new logic that are, at the same time, delegated to local units for flexible implementation (Binder, 2007;Brannen, 2004;Gond & Boxenbaum, 2013). Local elites can then couple their organizational units to the new institutional logic in accordance with the political context in the local subunits (Värlander et al, 2016) such that units that mobilized in favor of a new logic implement policies more faithfully than the others that countermobilized, resulting in differential implementation across subunits (Ansari, Fiss, & Zajac, 2010). A broad and general organizationwide commitment to the new logic (conveyed, for instance, via organization-wide policies or guidelines) combined with local flexibility (regarding the extent of local implementation of such policies and guidelines) can subdue active mobilization for change, as well as countermobilization and resistance, so that the organization returns to a settled state.…”

Co‐creation for sustainable development: The bounds of NGO contributions to inclusive business

“…Fourth, studies on the adaptation of single NGO practice and how it is adapted from the context of development cooperation to inclusive business could enrich both inclusive business and practice theoretical literatures (c.f. Värlander, Hinds, Thomason, Pearce, & Altman, ).…”

Constellations of Logics in Performance Appraisal: Comparative Ethnographic Cases of a Japanese Multinational Corporation

“…This is supported by the work of Ansari et al (2014), which argues for practice adaptation to fit itself into a local context when transferring the practice. Other research of Gond and Boxenbaum (2013) and Cramton and Hinds (2014) is based on the cultural influence of transferring practices in a different national context, while, most recently, the work of Värlander et al (2016) indicates that there are different constellations of logics in each country. Through an analysis of the transferral of practices into the US, India and China, they conclude that each practice at each site embodies different constellations of logics.…”