Institutions and Institutional Work

Introduction

Institutional approaches to organization studies focus attention on the relationships among organizations and the fields in which they operate, highlighting in particular the role of rational formal structures in enabling and constraining organizational behaviour. A key contribution of institutional studies has been the development of strong accounts of the processes through which institutions govern action. This has been accomplished in part through theoretical statements which have delineated key sets of concepts and relationships that tie institutional structures and logics to organizational forms and conduct (Meyer and Rowan 1977; DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Greenwood and Hinings 1996). Also key in the development of institutional understandings of organizational action has been the large set of empirical studies that have documented the connections among institutions, fields and organizations. These studies have catalogued the impact of institutional forces in a wide variety of sectors and geographic contexts, and at varying levels of analysis including intra-organizational (Zilber 2002), interorganizational (Leblebici et al. 1991) and international (Keohane 1989; Meyer et al. 1997). Finally, there has emerged an influential set of reviews of institutionalism in organization studies that have summarized and synthesized the major work in the area into coherent frameworks (DiMaggio and Powell 1991; Tolbert and Zucker 1996; Scott 2001; Schneiberg and Clemens 2006).

Although the traditional emphasis of institutional approaches to organization studies has been on the explanation of organizational similarity based on institutional conditions, there has over the past 10–15 years emerged a new emphasis in institutional studies on understanding the role of actors in effecting, transforming and maintaining institutions and fields. The role of actors in creating new institutions has been examined primarily under the rubric of institutional entrepreneurship (Eisenstadt 1980; DiMaggio 1988). DiMaggio (1988: 14) argues that institutional entrepreneurs are central to institutional processes, since ‘new institutions arise when organized actors with sufficient resources (institutional entrepreneurs) see in them an opportunity to realize interests that they value highly’. The concept of institutional entrepreneurship is important because it focuses attention on the manner in which interested actors work to influence their institutional contexts through such strategies as technical and market leadership, lobbying for regulatory change and discursive action (Suchman 1995; Fligstein 1997; Hoffman 1999; Garud et al. 2002; Maguire et al. 2004). The role of actors in the transformation of existing institutions and fields has also risen in prominence within institutional research. Institutional studies have documented the ability of actors, particularly those with some key strategic resources or other forms of power, to have significant impacts on the evolution of institutions and fields (Clemens 1993; Holm 1995; Oakes et al. 1998; Greenwood et al. 2002), including both institutional transformation and deinstitutionalization (Oliver 1992; Ahmadjian and Robinson 2001). Finally, a more modest amount of research has begun to examine the role of actors in maintaining institutions: although definitions of institution emphasize their enduring nature (Hughes 1936), institutions rely on the action of individuals and organizations for their reproduction over time (Berger and Luckmann 1966; Giddens 1984).

In this chapter, we aim to provide a summary and synthesis of research on what we refer to as ‘institutional work’ - the purposive action of individuals and organizations aimed at creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions. Thus far, research on [Page 216]institutional work has been largely unconnected as such - literatures on institutional entrepreneurship and deinstitutionalization have emerged as semi-coherent research streams, but the overall focus has remained largely unarticulated. Thus, a key contribution of this chapter will be the provision of a framework that connects previously disparate studies of institutional work and the articulation of a research agenda for the area. By focusing on empirical work that has occurred in the past 15 years and mapping it in terms of the forms of institutional work that it has examined, we are able to both provide a first cataloguing of forms of institutional work and point to issues and areas that have been under-examined.

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