Institutional maintenance in an international bureaucracy: Everyday practices of international elites inside UNESCO

Bjerregaard, Toke; Nielsen, Bjarke

doi:10.1016/j.emj.2014.03.003

Cited by 15 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…These actors are vital for transnational organizing, but largely absent from the literature on how transnational institution building occurs within institutional theory (cf. Bjerregaard and Nielsen, 2014 ). In our case study, we show that this is the case.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transnational organizing: Issue professionals in environmental sustainability networks

Henriksen

Seabrooke

2016

Organization

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An ongoing question for institutional theory is how organizing occurs transnationally, where institution building occurs in a highly ambiguous environment. This article suggests that at the core of transnational organizing is competition and coordination within professional and organizational networks over who controls issues. Transnational issues are commonly organized through professional battles over how issues are treated and what tasks are involved. These professional struggles are often more important than what organization has a formal mandate over an issue. We highlight how ‘issue professionals’ operate in two-level professional and organizational networks to control issues. This two-level network provides the context for action in which professionals do their institutional work. The two-level network carries information about professional incentives and also norms about how issues should be treated and governed by organizations. Using network and career sequences methods, we provide a case of transnational organizing through professionals who attempt issue control and network management on transnational environmental sustainability certification. The article questions how transnational organizing happens, and how we can best identify attempts at issue control.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transnational organizing: Issue professionals in environmental sustainability networks

Henriksen

Seabrooke

2016

Organization

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“…An increasing body of research imbues institutional meaning and substance into actors’ mundane activities and organizational operation (Maguire & Hardy, 2013; Trank & Washington, 2009). Bjerregaard and Nielsen (2014) illustrated how decision-makers recursively make sense of institutional rules and ascribe norms with legitimacy and authority within their day-to-day working practices to maintain institutions of international policy-making. This finding is in line with negotiation work, which demonstrates that “institutional rules are interpreted and negotiated rather than imposed or coerced” (Barley, 2008, p. 494).…”

Section: Theoretical Premises Of Institutional Maintenance Through Thmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Institutional work, defined as “the practices of individual and collective actors aimed at creating, maintaining, and disrupting institutions” (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006, p. 215), has gained strong momentum since its coinage. The literature exploring the creation and diffusion of institutions through purposive action is relatively rich (Granqvist & Gustafsson, 2016; Maguire, Hardy, & Lawrence, 2004; Tracey, Phillips, & Jarvis, 2011), yet only a handful of recent work has focused on actors’ efforts in ensuring the continuity of existing institutions (Bjerregaard & Nielsen, 2014; Hardy & Maguire, 2010; Taupin, 2012). Existing studies focus largely on successful instances of institutional work that keep institutional settings unaltered (Hardy & Maguire, 2008; Raviola & Norbäck, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subordinate Actors’ Institutional Maintenance in Response to Coercive Reforms

Xiao

Klarin

2019

Journal of Management Inquiry

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Institutional work research shows how actors purposively create, maintain, and disrupt institutions. Failed or unintended consequences of institutional maintenance remain relatively unexplored, for two reasons. First, the role of coercive disruption actors (e.g., a state) has not been fully explored. Second, existing literature takes scant account of power and disregards the resistance tactics of subordinate actors. Drawing on a longitudinal case study of a migrant workers’ union in China, we show how subordinate actors were first able to maintain institutional arrangements followed by a maintenance failure under the disruption work performed by the authoritarian state. This study extends the institutional maintenance literature in two ways. First, subordinate actors can sustain institutions insofar as they collectively deploy superficial deference and hidden forms of resistance. Second, maintenance work is vulnerable in the sense that it is contingent on the systems of domination and the level of pressure exerted by the disruption actors.

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“…Some countries are more aggressive than others and feel they have more to win or lose in the scramble for World Heritage, as outlined by an independent Norwegian report (Report by the Norwegian Delegation ). Of course, members of the Center are themselves national elites who must balance their own personal attachments for their nation and region against the work of the international civil service (Bjerregaard and Nielsen ). This slippage was evident during the Doha meetings when a senior Secretariat official spoke from the podium, encouraged by a European Committee member, on the virtues of a cultural landscape inscription from his own country and its famous wines.…”

Section: World Heritage Playersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transacting UNESCO World Heritage: gifts and exchanges on a global stage

Meskell

2015

Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale

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Transacting UNESCO World Heritage:gifts and exchanges on a global stage With the burgeoning research into global heritage, particularly in the work of UNESCO, this paper discusses recent developments and implications of decisions taken by the World Heritage Committee in their implementation of the 1972 Convention. While the World Heritage programme is experiencing a fiscal crisis, significant challenges also stem from sovereign states, non-governmental agencies and other actors. This paper argues that World Heritage decision-making processes have transformed the inscription of sites into exchange values that mobilise ancillary effects in other domains driven by economic and political imperatives. The transactional nature of World Heritage is traced across three scales: the World Heritage process itself, the properties and the participants.

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Institutional maintenance in an international bureaucracy: Everyday practices of international elites inside UNESCO

Cited by 15 publications

References 48 publications

Transnational organizing: Issue professionals in environmental sustainability networks

Transnational organizing: Issue professionals in environmental sustainability networks

Subordinate Actors’ Institutional Maintenance in Response to Coercive Reforms

Transacting UNESCO World Heritage: gifts and exchanges on a global stage

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