Look What's Back! Institutional Complexity, Reversibility and the Knotting of Logics

Abstract

Through a comparative historical study of community pharmacy in the UK, Italy, Sweden and the USA, we examine what happens to institutional arrangements designed to resolve ongoing conflicts between institutional logics over extended periods of time. We find that institutional arrangements can reflect the heterogeneity of multiple logics without resulting in hybridization or dominance. Because logics remain active, similar conflicts can reappear multiple times. We find that the durability of the configurations of competing logics reflects the characteristics of the polities in which fields are embedded. The dominance of any societal institutional order leads to more stable field level arrangements. We suggest that the metaphor of institutional knots and the related image of institutional knotting are useful to capture aspects of this dynamic and to foreground the discursive and material work which allows multiple logics to co-exist in local arrangements with variable durability.

A perspective on multinational enterprise’s national identity dilemma

“…Institutional logics provide the common rules that govern organisational action in a given institutional environment (Hughes, Powell, Chung & Mellahi, 2017;Kasper & Streit, 1998;Nicolini, Delmestri, Goodrick, Reay, Lindberg & Adolfsson, 2016;Thornton 2004). Greenwood, Díaz, Li, and Lorente (2010, p. 521) argue that "organizational forms and managerial practices are manifestations of, and legitimated by, institutional logics".…”

Evolution of Institutional Logics: The Emergence of the Temporary Work Agencies Field in Italy

“…In literature we can find different ways of conceptualizing the relationship between multiple logics (Reay et al, 2009, Westenholz, 2011Nicolini et al, 2016). Some authors argue that among logics there is a dominant one which guides behaviours and in this conceptualization, different institutional logics coexist within an organizational field, challenging each other to become dominant and pushing for radical or incremental changes.…”

“…12, No. 8;2017 The research carried out on the field of TWAs has highlighted the importance of events to understand the development process of the organizational fields and interdependence between logics and action (Meyer, Brooks, & Goes,1990;Greenwood, Suddaby, & Hinings, 2002;Nicolini et al, 2016). The analysis shows the existence of a series of inconsequential events that, nevertheless, represent significant moments in the evolution of the field under investigation and confirm the existence of an institutional logic in a certain period.…”

Speaking of safety

“…Whereas early work about logic multiplicity framed the relationship between conflicting logics in terms of dominance (Nicolini, Delmestri, Goodrick, Reay, Lindberg, & Adolfsson, 2016), as if one logic won, later research associated logic multiplicity with increased durability, sustainability, and innovativeness (Besharov & Smith, 2014). Additionally, research found that multiple conflicting logics can coexist for long periods of time or remain unresolved (Nicolini et al, 2016), and organisations that could not achieve their goals with one singular logic were identified (Johansen & Waldorff, 2015).…”

“…Whereas early work about logic multiplicity framed the relationship between conflicting logics in terms of dominance (Nicolini, Delmestri, Goodrick, Reay, Lindberg, & Adolfsson, 2016), as if one logic won, later research associated logic multiplicity with increased durability, sustainability, and innovativeness (Besharov & Smith, 2014). Additionally, research found that multiple conflicting logics can coexist for long periods of time or remain unresolved (Nicolini et al, 2016), and organisations that could not achieve their goals with one singular logic were identified (Johansen & Waldorff, 2015). In order to account for these conflicting outcomes of logic multiplicity research, Besharov and Smith (2014) developed a framework that allows for the categorisation of organisations along two (continues) axes: the degree of logic compatibility (i.e., the extent to which logics provide (in)compatible prescriptions for action) and the degree of logic centrality (i.e., the extent to which one or multiple logics are core to organisational functioning).…”