The Role of Competing Rationalities in Institutional Change.

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Academy of Management THE ROLE OF COMPETING RATIONALITIES IN INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE BARBARA TOWNLEY Edinburgh UniversityReporting on a longitudinal case study of the introduction of business planning and perfornance measures in cultural organizations, this article uses Weber's identification of types of rationality as a means to illuminate institutional and organizational change. The study illustrates how conflict that accompanies change coalesces around different dimensions of rationality-substantive, practical, theoretical, and instrumental-that inform organization members' understandings of organizational and professional identity and management practices.

Fair Trade Organizations in Belgium: Unity in Diversity?

“…In particular, the commercial departments of these FTOs became increasingly important, even obtaining considerable autonomy in the context of group structures. From a neo-institutional perspective, as put forward by Meyer and Rowan (1977) and Townley (2002), the fact that the commercial departments have gained power and autonomy can be seen as a consequence of the fact that they embody the most recent and powerful rationale, striving toward professionalization and market-orientation. Other implications were the involvement of people with business expertise in the management and governance structures and a stronger use of marketing tools in the design and distribution of the products.…”

Strategy of firms in unstable institutional environments

“…Others (see Dacin et al, 2002;Goodrick & Salancik, 1996;Hoffman, 1999) maintain that institutions are rather the framework within which change takes place, and acknowledge both variation and change. Change is the product of perceptions, interpretations, and enactments of institutional logics of actors who give meaning and life to institutions (Townley, 2002).…”

Goals versus institutions: the development of performance measurement in the Swedish university sector

“…As far as PM is concerned, an NIS perspective may lead to a more pragmatic stance, seeing the apparent "over-proliferation" of PIs and lack of coupling to clearly stated goals as less of a weakness, but rather a natural response to the need to provide information to a broad range of constituencies with vaguely defined and occasionally conflicting interests (Brignall and Modell, 2000;Feldman and March, 1981;Meyer and Gupta, 1994;Modell, 2004). A primary theme in empirical research informed by this approach has been to explore how public sector managers and organizations respond to external pressures to adopt various PM practices (see Johnsen, 1999;Johnsen et al, 2001;Lawton et al, 2000;McKevitt and Lawton, 1996;Modell, 2001;Townley, 2002). However, little attention has been paid to the development of models and standards for PM at the macro level of different organizational fields and the processes involved in establishing PIs and evaluation procedures that organizations are expected to comply with.…”