Candace Jones

From Novel Practice to Consecrated Exemplar: Unity Temple as a Case of Institutional Evangelizing

Institutional theorists focus on practices that spread because they conform with and build on established cultural assumptions and resources. Novel practices, however, not only fail to conform to, but also challenge the dominant institutional order. We seek to understand the process by which novel practices move from entrepreneurial anomaly to consecrated exemplar within a field. We contrast Unity Temple by Frank Lloyd Wright—a building that challenged the accepted practices of ecclesiastical design in the architectural profession—with the most prominent churches during the same period. We find two distinct legitimation processes—institutional evangelism where creators express their identity and generate novel practices versus adaptive emulation where adopters focus on prestigious others and emulate their established practices. We reveal that actors engaged in institutional evangelism and adaptive emulation, employing institutional work and leveraging ideas, materials and identities to effect, transform, and maintain institutions. Our comparative cases show the key role of materiality, particularly collective identity markers, in institutional work and institutional processes.

Qualitatively capturing institutional logics

There is an ever-increasing volume of studies investigating institutional logics, and yet qualitative methods for studying this phenomenon are not clear. In this essay, we examine how qualitative scholars convince their readers that they are actually studying institutional logics. We identify three different, but non-exclusive techniques that have been employed: pattern deducing, pattern matching, and pattern inducing. For each of these approaches, we explain the ontological assumptions, methodological techniques, challenges, and benefits. In addition, we provide examples of how specific studies have analyzed and presented qualitative data to improve theory about institutional logics.

Misfits, Mavericks and Mainstreams: Drivers of Innovation in the Creative Industries

Creative industries are among the fastest-growing and most important sectors of European and North American economies. Their growth depends on continuous innovation, which is important in many industries and also challenging to manage because of inherent tensions. Creative industries, similar to many industries, depend not only on novelty to attract consumers, but also on familiarity to aid comprehension and stabilize demand for cultural products. Agents in the creative industries play with these tensions, generating novelty that shifts industries’ labels and boundaries. This tension and agency makes them a valuable setting for advancing theoretical ideas on who drives innovation, from mavericks that challenge conventions to mainstreams that build upon them. We trace this history and then turn to the five papers in the special issue, which examine in depth how mavericks, misfits, mainstreams and amphibians in various creative domains, from artistic perfumery to choreography, engage with innovation and address tensions. These processes of innovation point to future research that explores and exploits the role of materiality in meaning making, the role of capitals in translation processes and the dynamics of value and evaluation.

The immateriality of material practices in institutional logics.

According to most theoretical formulations, institutional logics contain both an ideational and a material dimension. While the ideational aspect, such as cognitive frames and symbols, has received significant attention in the growing literature on institutional logics, the material aspect has remained largely invisible and often implicit. We analyze the 16 most central theoretical and empirical works on institutional logics with the aim of exploring how the material dimension of logics has been conceptualized and researched. Our findings suggest that materiality has been interpreted primarily as practices and structures, and rarely as physical objects. We explore some consequences of omitting physical materials as an object of study in institutional logics research and point to avenues for future research that may enhance theory development of institutional logics by explicitly attending to the role of materials.

Toward a projects as events perspective

Purpose – Over the last 15 years, a growing literature on project-based organizing (PBO) has emerged, drawing on various theoretical streams based on distinctive and sometimes conflicting assumptions. Organization-centric approaches tend to highlight projects as portfolios that provide assets to meet strategic goals, but leave un-assessed the processes by which projects evolve, are chosen and governed. Field-centric studies of PBO tend to highlight how relations among and across actors (individuals or organizations) evolve over time, but also neglect how projects meet actors’ strategic needs. We introduce a “projects as events” perspective in an effort to integrate insights from these distinct conceptualizations. n nDesign/methods – We review previous studies on PBO and elaborate on the theorization of a “projects as events” perspective, suggesting various reasons why it might help advance research on PBO, for example, by allowing researchers to address how projects interact across multiple levels of analysis. n nFindings – By drawing on examples from the creative industries, we illustrate various instances in which projects are events: sequences of activities that unfold gradually or suddenly, and trigger distinctive networks across multiple levels of analysis. n nOriginality/value – A projects as events perspective facilitates the use and the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, such as event sequencing with narrative analysis, or historical events with network analysis. By doing so, scholars may more easily cross levels of analysis by examining the various networks engaged in a project to unfold and provide a fuller understanding of PBO.

Towards an Articulation of the Material and Visual Turn in Organization Studies

Contemporary organizations increasingly rely on images, logos, videos, building materials, graphic and product design, and a range of other material and visual artifacts to compete, communicate, form identity and organize their activities. This Special Issue focuses on materiality and visuality in the course of objectifying and reacting to novel ideas, and, more broadly, contributes to organizational theory by articulating the emergent contours of a material and visual turn in the study of organizations. In this Introduction, we provide an overview of research on materiality and visuality. Drawing on the articles in the special issue, we further explore the affordances and limits of the material and visual dimensions of organizing in relation to novelty. We conclude by pointing out theoretical avenues for advancing multimodal research, and discuss some of the ethical, pragmatic and identity-related challenges that a material and visual turn could pose for organizational research.

The Architecture of City Identities: A Multimodal Study of Barcelona and Boston

Abstract nCity identity is a distinct form of collective identity based on the perceived uniqueness and meanings of place, rather than group category and membership. A city’s identity is constructed over time through architecture, which involves three sign systems – material, visual, and rhetorical – and multiple institutional actors to communicate the city’s distinctiveness and identity. We compare Barcelona and Boston to examine the identity and meaning created and communicated by different groups of professionals, such as architects, city planners, international guide book writers, and local cultural critics, who perform the semiotic work of xadconstructing city identity.

Call for Papers Misfits, Mavericks and Mainstreams: Drivers of Innovation in Creative Industries

This special issue of Organization Studies welcomes scholarly work on the nature, sources, and value of innovation in creative industries, as well as on the roles and relationships of actors who drive these processes (Bechky, 2006; Jones, 2010). In particular, we invite explorations on the activities and interactions of misfits, mavericks and mainstream individual and collective agents (Peterson & Berger, 1971; Becker, 1982; White & White, 1965) in the emergence of radical or incremental novelty (e.g. genres, forms of production and consumption, new business models) that transforms creative industries (Jones & Thornton, 2005; Svejenova, Planellas & Vives, 2010). Creative industries encompass individuals and collectives engaged in conceiving, developing, and distributing artifacts and experiences with aesthetic properties and symbolic functions, such as books, music, films, paintings, or dance and theatre performances, design, fashion, and architecture. Their strong dependence on originality and novelty for distinctiveness (Alvarez, Mazza, Strandgaard Pedersen, & Svejenova, 2005), as new genres and styles get conceived, theorized, legitimized, diffused and consumed by a range of audiences, makes them a valuable setting for advancing theory on the originators, genesis, and trajectories of innovation. We seek contributions that allow unpacking important dynamics of how newness of products, categories and consumption patterns comes into being and transforms art worlds, fields or industries (White & White, 1965; Becker, 1982; DiMaggio, 1991; Hirsch, 2000). We are open to a diverse set of theoretical and empirical methodologies, as well as to a range of settings. We are particularly interested in longitudinal studies–either qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods–examining change over the course of an industry, the trajectory of a genre, or the life cycle of individual artists or collectivities of innovators. Specifically, we encourage studies that take language and discourse in framing an innovation into account (Jones & Livne-Tarandach, 2008), as well as processes of innovation co-creation between creatives and their audiences, benefitting from the opportunities opened up by social media. In addition to studies on how innovation finds its way in consolidated creative industries, such as music, publishing and art, we invite research on industries that have only recently started acquiring “artistic” recognition, such cuisine, wine, video games, or new media (Svejenova, Mazza & Planellas, 2007; Tschang, 2007). Finally, we strongly encourage comparative studies (across creative organizations, industries, as well as across counties) and, in particular, submissions that capture innovation in creative industries from contexts that are largely underrepresented in scholarly work, such as emerging economies (Khaire & Wadhwani, forthcoming). We look for submissions that address four main domains of inquiry on the origins and trajectories of innovation in creative industries who, what, how, and where: