What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

1. Introduction to the Institutional Logics Perspective 2. Precursors to the Institutional Logics Perspective 3. Defining the Inter-institutional System 4. The Emergence, Stability and Change of the Inter-institutional System 5. Micro-Foundations of Institutional Logics 6. The Dynamics of Organizational Practices and Identities 7. The Emergence and Evolution of Field-Level Logics 8. Implications for Future Research

The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure and Process

This article makes the case for the socioemotional wealth (SEW) approach as the potential dominant paradigm in the family business field. The authors argue that SEW is the most important differentiator of the family firm as a unique entity and, as such, helps explain why family firms behave distinctively. In doing so, the authors review the concept of SEW, its different dimensions, and its links with other theoretical approaches. The authors also address the issue of how to measure this construct and offer various alternatives for operationalizing it. Finally, they offer a set of topics that can be pursued in future studies using the SEW approach.

Socioemotional Wealth in Family Firms Theoretical Dimensions, Assessment Approaches, and Agenda for Future Research

Organizational ambidexterity refers to the ability of an organization to both explore and exploit—to compete in mature technologies and markets where efficiency, control, and incremental improvement are prized and to also compete in new technologies and markets where flexibility, autonomy, and experimentation are needed. In the past 15 years there has been an explosion of interest and research on this topic. We briefly review the current state of the research, highlighting what we know and don't know about the topic. We close with a point of view on promising areas for ongoing research.

Organizational Ambidexterity: Past, Present, and Future

Organizational ambidexterity refers to the ability of an organization to both explore and exploit--to compete in mature technologies and markets where efficiency, control, and incremental improvement are prized and to also compete in new technologies and markets where flexibility, autonomy, and experimentation are needed. In the past 15 years there has been an explosion of interest and research on this topic. We briefly review the current state of the research, highlighting what we know and don't know about the topic. We close with a point of view on promising areas for ongoing research.

Organizational Ambidexterity: Past, Present and Future

Organizations face institutional complexity whenever they confront incompatible prescriptions from multiple institutional logics. Our interest is in how plural institutional logics, refracted through field-level structures and processes, are experienced within organizations and how organizations respond to such complexity. We draw on a variety of cognate literatures to discuss the field-level structural characteristics and organizational attributes that shape institutional complexity. We then explore the repertoire of strategies and structures that organizations deploy to cope with multiple, competing demands. The analytical framework developed herein is presented to guide future scholarship in the systematic analysis of institutional complexity. We conclude by suggesting avenues for future research.

Institutional Complexity and Organizational Responses

We review and integrate a wide range of literature that has examined the strategies by which organizations navigate institutionally diverse settings and capture rents outside of the marketplace. We synthesize this body of research under the umbrella term institutional strategies, which we define as the comprehensive set of plans and actions directed at leveraging and shaping socio-political and cultural institutions to obtain or retain competitive advantage. Our review of institutional strategies is focused on emerging market contexts, settings that are characterized by weak capital market and regulatory infrastructures and fast-paced turbulent change. Under such challenging conditions, strategies aimed at shaping the institutional environment may be especially critical to an organization's performance and long-term survival. Our review reveals that organizations engage in three specific and identifiable sets of institutional strategies, which we term relational, infrastructure-building, and socio...

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Institutional Strategies in Emerging Markets

Organizations face institutional complexity whenever they confront incompatible prescriptions from multiple institutional logics. Our interest is in how plural institutional logics, refracted through ﬁeld-level structures and processes, are experienced within organizations and how organizations respond to such complexity. We draw on a variety of cognate literatures to discuss the ﬁeld-level structural characteristics and organizational attributes that shape institutional complexity. We then explore the repertoire of strategies and structures that organizations deploy to cope with multiple, competing demands. The analytical framework developed herein is presented to guide future scholarship in the systematic analysis of institutional complexity. We conclude by suggesting avenues for future research.

Although scholars contend that family and corporate heritage can be strategically deployed to gain a competitive advantage, few studies have examined the specific ways in which family firms leverag...

Concealing or Revealing the Family?: Corporate Brand Identity Strategies in Family Firms

This article unpacks the notion of institutional complexity and highlights the distinct sets of challenges confronting hybrid structural arrangements. The framework identifies three factors that contribute to the experience of complexity—namely, the extent to which the prescriptive demands of logics are incompatible, whether there is a settled or widely accepted prioritization of logics within the field, and the degree to which the jurisdictions of the logics overlap. The central thesis is that these “components” of complexity variously combine to produce four distinct institutional landscapes, each with differing implications for the challenges organizations face and for how they might respond. The article explores the situational relevance of an array of hybridizing responses and discusses their implications for organizational legitimacy and performance. It concludes by specifying the boundary conditions of the framework and highlighting fruitful directions for future scholarship.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1476127016634639

Mia Raynard

Papers

Institutional Complexity and Organizational Responses

Institutional Strategies in Emerging Markets

Institutional Complexity and Organizational Responses

Concealing or Revealing the Family?: Corporate Brand Identity Strategies in Family Firms

Deconstructing Complexity: Configurations of Institutional Complexity and Structural Hybridity