C. R. Hinings

Managing the Rivalry of Competing Institutional Logics

We investigated an organizational field where competing institutional logics existed for a lengthy period of time. We identified four mechanisms for managing the rivalry of competing logics that facilitated and strengthened the separate identities of key actors, thus providing a way for competing logics to co-exist and separately guide the behaviour of different actors. We contribute to the institutional literature by showing that competing logics can co-exist and rivalry between logics can be managed through the development of collaborative relationships.

Organizational Design Types, Tracks and the Dynamics of Strategic Change

Change and stability in organizations is to be understood through the twin concepts of design archetypes and tracks. Organizations operate with structural designs which are given meaning and coherence by underlying interpretive schemes. Particular interpre tive schemes coupled with associated structural arrangements constitute a design archetype. The temporal relationship between an organization and one or more archetypes defines an organizations track. Prototypical tracks include inertia, aborted excursions, re-orientations and unresolved excursions. The particular track followed by an organization will be a function of the degree of alignment or compatibility between structures and contingency constraints, the pattern of commitment to prevailing and alternative interpretive schemes and the incidence of interest dissatisfaction of powerful groups.

The pace, sequence, and linearity of radical change

The purpose of this research was to explore how the pace, sequence, and linearity of change can affect the outcome of radical transformations. Real-time data collected over 12 years showed that, contrary to popular belief, wide-scale rapid change was not a determining factor. However, early change to specific “high-impact” elements was found to be necessary for completing radical transitions. Further, analysis conducted at the suborganization level provided insight into the ways in which change unfurls in a nonlinear manner.

Rethinking Institutions and Organizations

In this Point–Counterpoint article we argue that institutional scholarship has become overly concerned with explaining institutions and institutional processes, notably at the level of the organization field, rather than with using them to explain and understand organizations. Especially missing is an attempt to gain a coherent, holistic account of how organizations are structured and managed. We also argue that when institutional theory does give attention to organizations it inappropriately treats them as though they are the same, or at least as though any differences are irrelevant for purposes of theory. We propose a return to the study of organizations with an emphasis upon comparative analysis, and suggest the institutional logics perspective as an appropriate means for doing so.

Toward a communicative perspective of collaborating in research: the case of the researcher–decision-maker partnership

In the shift to a post-industrial order, the production and use of knowledge is gaining greater importance in a world beyond science. Particularly in the health sciences, research foundations are emphasising the importance of translating research results into practice and are experimenting with various strategies to achieve this outcome, including requiring practitioners to become part of funded research teams. In this paper, we present a case of a partnership between researchers and decision-makers in Canada who collaborated on an investigation of implementing change in health care organisations. Grounded in this case and recent empirical work, we propose that such research collaborations can be best understood from a communicative perspective and as involving four key elements: relational stance that researchers and decision-makers assume toward each other; purpose at hand that situates occasions for developing and using knowledge; knowledge-sharing practices for translating knowledge; and forums in which researchers and practitioners access knowledge. Our analyses suggest that partnerships are most effective when researchers see the value of contextualising their work and decision-makers see how this work can help them accomplish their purpose at hand.

Returning to the Frontier of Contingency Theory of Organizational and Institutional Designs

Much has been learned, and even more needs to be learned, about designing organizations and institutions. Since the 1960s this research has evolved from contingency to configuration, to complementarity, to complexity and creative theories of organizing. This chapter reviews these evolving theories (better called perspectives) and urges scholars to return to the frontier of organization studies by addressing an important new agenda in designing organizations with promising new research methods.

Defending Organization Theory: A British View from North America

Four things in that career passage seem to be important because, hopefully, they help to illuminate a variety of issues involved in defending organization theory and in understanding how and why particular issues have developed. These four things are: initial training; initial research directions; later reserch development; moving to North America. I will try to deal with each of these in terms of issues for organization theory. I was trained as a sociologist/social anthropologist. (It was touch and go whether I went to study the Ashanti at the University of Ghana or the Austin at the Birmingham College of Advanced Technology.) This meant that, initially, sociology and the study of organizations were synonymous. Increasingly this has not been the case. One of the major changes of the past 25 years has been the shift of those studying organizations (at the macro-level) from departments of sociology to business schools/management centres. Initially this was literally a shift of people from one to the other (as in my own case). Over the past 15 years it has increasingly been an institutionalized split with the management centres producing their own intellectual product, the Ph.D. in organizational analysis. The professional basis for the study of organizations has changed drastically. This is important because of the tension it has created, a tension reflected in

Editorial Introduction to the Special Issue: Knowledge and Professional Organizations

The call for articles for this special issue on ‘Knowledge and Professional Organizations’ emphasized the wide variety of topics that could and should be treated under this overall subject. This variety and diversity is reflected in the six articles that appear here. The call emphasized the two basic themes of how knowledge is developed and disseminated within organizations of professionals and how these groups act to spread ideas into and across organizations more generally. In developing these themes further, topics such as the transfer of knowledge between professional firms, associations and other sectors, the creation and legitimation of new knowledge, the impact of alternative governance structures (corporate or partnership and private or public sector) on the management of knowledge, managing professionals in global professional service firms and the management of tacit knowledge were mentioned as topics of potential articles. The first three articles are concerned in various ways with knowledge systems and knowledge creation within professional service firms and two of them look outside the immediate operation of the firm for some of the sources of knowledge creation. Robertson, Scarbrough and Swan examine the impact of institutional influences on knowledge creation, studying a law firm and a scientific organization. Their interesting argument is that the institutional form of different professions presents different constraints for the processes of knowledge creation. This is particularly seen through the ways in which these institutionalized differences impact on work autonomy, knowledge legitimation and social identity formation. Their work has two important findings. First, that there are different institutionally embedded means of legitimating knowledge that are seen in varying emphases on experimentation, personal networking and documentary codification of knowledge. Second, they highlight the role of management as it moulds professional norms in the firmspecific context, shaping and mobilizing professional social identities in ways that serve corporate ends. An intriguing element in this article is the way in which processes of knowledge creation are seen as the product of interactions between institutional influences, social identity and firm-specific contexts and purposes. We are presented with the challenge of understanding how the generalities of institutional and professional circumstances are translated into sets of practices in a particular organizational setting. Fosstenløkken, Løwendahl and Revang have a focus on the role of clients in knowledge development. Their argument is that clients are often both Organization Studies 24(6): 827–830 Copyright