Michael Lounsbury

Institutional Complexity and Organizational Responses

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.

New Practice Creation: An Institutional Perspective on Innovation

Neoinstitutionalists have developed a rich array of theoretical and empirical insights about how new practices become established via legitimacy and diffusion, but have paid scant attention to their origins. This blind spot has been reinforced by recent work on institutional entrepreneurship which has too often celebrated the actions of a single or small number of actors, and deflected attention away from the emergent, multilevel nature of how new kinds of activities emerge and provide a foundation for the creation of a new practice. In this paper, we examine the case of the creation of active money management practice in the US mutual fund industry, drawing on both institutional and practice scholarship, to develop a process model of new practice creation that redirects attention toward the multiplicity of actors that interactively produce change.

Institutional Sources of Practice Variation: Staffing College and University Recycling Programs

In this paper, I examine how variation arises in the staffing of recycling programs at colleges and universities. Through initial fieldwork, I identified two basic recycling program forms. Some schools adopted recycling programs that entailed the creation of new, full-time recycling manager positions that were filled by ecological activists. Other schools adopted more minimalist programs that were staffed by current employees who were more ecologically ambivalent and assumed recycling management responsibilities as a part-time, additional duty. Results of a subsequent survey of a population of colleges and universities show that this variation in staffing was importantly shaped by the Student Environmental Action Coalition, a national social movement organization that provided resources and support to student environmental groups at particular schools. Implications for the study of how field-level organizations shape the content of organizational practices are discussed.

Ending the Family Quarrel Toward a Reconciliation of “Old” and “New” Institutionalisms

Over the past couple of decades, research in organizational sociology has shifted away from the contextual richness of action perspectives toward more structuralist paradigms. DiMaggio and Powells distinction between what they label the “old” and “new” institutionalisms highlights this general trend. The present authors offer a critical review of this generational paradigm debate among institutional theorists and challenge DiMaggio and Powells assertion that the new should replace the old. The present authors advocate a reconciliation between these theoretical currents that would provide a more balanced approach to the action-structure duality.

Institutional Transformation and Status Mobility: The Professionalization of the Field of Finance

This work reports on a study that investigated how the transformation of institutional logics—the tearing down of old logics and the construction of new ones—opens up possibilities for actors to ma...

The New Structuralism in Organizational Theory

Over the past decade, a new structuralism has begun to emerge in organizational theory. This exciting new research program draws inspiration from the social structural tradition in sociology, but extends that tradition by more broadly conceptualizing social structure as comprised of broader cultural rules and meaning systems as well as material resources—revealing the subtleties of both overt and covert power. Building on the insights of Bourdieu and related work in social theory and cultural sociology, new structuralist empirical research focuses on concrete manifestations of culture in everyday practice and has pioneered the measurement of cultural aspects of social structure using a variety of relational methods. In this essay, we revisit mid-century social structural approaches to organizations, review the development of organization theory as a management subfield that increasingly focused on instrumental exchange, highlight key aspects of the new structuralism in organizational theory, and discuss promising new research directions.

Sources of Durability and Change in Market Classifications: A Study of the Reconstitution of Product Categories in the American Mutual Fund Industry, 1944–1985

Categories are key elements of classification systems that segregate things into groups and impose coherence. Sociologists have studied how categories shape action in a wide variety of contexts but have spent much less time investigating the sources of category durability and change. We address this gap by investigating how existing product categories are reconstituted by field-level industry media. While standard accounts of industry media suggest that existing product categories will be edited on the basis of changes in the technical features of categories, we emphasize the political nature of markets and argue that powerful producers can preserve the existing structure of categories. We test these arguments in a study of the American mutual fund industry during the period from 1945 until 1985 and outline implications for research on institutional change and the political dynamics of market classification.

The Wizards of Oz: Towards an Institutional Approach to Elites, Expertise and Command Posts

Over the past half century, organizational studies scholarship has increasingly drifted away from addressing broader societal and political issues, as well as an interest in developing policy-relevant recommendations. In this paper, we argue that the time is ripe for a systematic re-engagement with how the dynamics of economy and society are fundamentally shaped by various elites, new forms of expertise, and their command posts — centers of societal power that regulate, oversee, and aim to maintain social order. Recalling early efforts by C. Wright Mills and his contemporaries, we call for the development of an institutional approach to the study of elites and command posts that draws on contemporary theories of power and culture to inform the creation of a new body of knowledge to inform our understanding of policy making and implementation. Drawing on a diverse array of sociological literatures and examples, the institutionalist agenda we lay out requires research that goes beyond a focus on any particular nation-state; a cumulative research program that embraces cross-national comparative studies and the study of international elites and command posts that operate across nation-states is crucial.

Policy as Myth and Ceremony? The Global Spread of Stock Exchanges, 1980-2005

We examine the antecedents and consequences in developing countries of creating a national stock exchange, a core technology of financial globalization. We study local conditions and global institutional pressures in the rapid spread of exchanges since the 1980s and examine how conditions at the point of adoption affected exchanges’ subsequent vibrancy. Little prior research connects the process of diffusion with the operational performance of adopted policies. We find that international coercion was associated with more ceremonial adoption but that, contrary to expectations common in institutional research, contagion processes via peer groups and normative emulation of prestigious actors enhanced vibrancy.

Analysing, Accounting for and Unmasking Domination: On Our Role as Scholars of Practice, Practitioners of Social Science and Public Intellectuals

Over the last 30 years, there has been an increasing interest in organizational analysis for the work of Pierre Bourdieu. However, the consequent body of literature often lacks an integrated comprehension of Bourdieusian theory and therefore fails to fully exploit its potentialities. In this essay, we argue for a more systematic engagement with the work of Bourdieu by organizational scholars and emphasize the opportunity to develop cumulative research on domination within and between organizations. The means by which systems of domination are reproduced without conscious intention by agents is a central issue for Bourdieu and arguably the primary reason for the development of his theoretical framework. It is thus through the study of domination that one can acquire a panoramic vision of Bourdieusian concepts that have been otherwise too often tackled separately. Moreover, domination is also a key entry to the understanding of how social scientists produce their own knowledge and of their role as members of society. We emphasize that as scholars, we have a moral responsibility to be reflexive about our practice and the social worlds we study in order to ultimately use the knowledge we produce to inform and direct social progress.