Michael Smets

Reconstructing institutional complexity in practice: A relational model of institutional work and complexity

This article develops a relational model of institutional work and complexity. This model advances current institutional debates on institutional complexity and institutional work in three ways. First, it provides a relational and dynamic perspective on institutional complexity by explaining how constellations of logics − and their degree of internal contradiction − are constructed rather than given. Second, it refines our current understanding of agency, intentionality and effort in institutional work by demonstrating how different dimensions of agency interact dynamically in the institutional work of reconstructing institutional complexity. Third, it situates institutional work in the everyday practice of individuals coping with the institutional complexities of their work. In doing so, it reconnects the construction of institutionally complex settings to the actions and interactions of the individuals who inhabit them.

New career models in UK professional service firms: from up-or-out to up-and-going-nowhere?

In this paper, we empirically examine how professional service firms are adapting their promotion and career models to new market and institutional pressures, without losing the benefits of the traditional up-or-out tournament. Based on an in-depth qualitative study of 10 large UK based law firms we find that most of these firms do not have a formal up-or-out policy but that the up-or-out rule operates in practice. We also find that most firms have introduced alternative roles and a novel career policy that offers a holistic learning and development deal to associates without any expectation that unsuccessful candidates for promotion to partner should quit the firm. While this policy and the new roles formally contradict the principle of up-or-out by creating permanent non-partner positions, in practice they coexist. We conclude that the motivational power of the up-or-out tournament remains intact, notwithstanding the changes to the internal labour market structure of these professional service firms.

INSTITUTIONAL AMBIDEXTERITY: LEVERAGING INSTITUTIONAL COMPLEXITY IN PRACTICE

This paper develops a practice approach to institutional ambidexterity. In doing so, it first explores the ‘promise’ of institutional ambidexterity as a concept to address shortcomings with the treatment of complexity in institutional theory. However, we argue that this is an empty promise because ambidexterity remains an organizational level construct that neither connects to the institutional level, or to the practical actions and interactions within which individuals enact institutions. We therefore suggest a practice approach that we develop into a conceptual framework for fulfilling the promise of institutional ambidexterity. The second part of the paper outlines what a practice approach is and the variation in practice-based insights into institutional ambidexterity that we might expect in contexts of novel or routine institutional complexity. Finally, the paper concludes with a research agenda that highlights the potential of practice to extend institutional theory through new research approaches to well-established institutional theory questions, interests and established-understandings.

Charting new territory for organizational ethnography : Insights from a team-based video ethnography

Purpose – Increasing complexity, fragmentation, mobility, pace, and technological intermediation of organizational life make “being there” increasingly difficult. Where do ethnographers have to be, when, for how long, and with whom to “be there” and grasp the practices, norms, and values that make the situation meaningful to natives? These novel complexities call for new forms of organizational ethnography. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the above issues. Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, the authors respond to these calls for innovative ethnographic methods in two ways. First, the paper reports on the practices and ethnographic experiences of conducting a year-long team-based video ethnography of reinsurance trading in London. Findings – Second, drawing on these experiences, the paper proposes a framework for systematizing new approaches to organizational ethnography and visualizing the ways in which they are “expanding” ethnography as it was traditionally practiced. Originality/value – The paper contributes to the ethnographic literature in three ways: first, the paper develops a framework for charting new approaches to ethnography and highlight its different dimensions – site, instrument, and fieldworker. Second, the paper outlines the opportunities and challenges associated with these expansions, specifically with regard to research design, analytical rigour, and communication of results. Third, drawing on the previous two contributions, the paper highlights configurations of methodological expansions on the aforementioned dimensions that are more promising than others in leveraging new technologies and approaches to claim new territory for organizational ethnography and enhance its relevance for understanding today’s multifarious organizational realities.

Management Consultancies as Institutional Agents: Strategies for Creating and Sustaining Institutional Capital

We classify the strategies by which management consultancies can create and sustain the institutional capital that makes it possible for them to extract competitive resources from their institutional context. Using examples from the German consulting industry, we show how localized competitive actions can enhance both individual firms’ positions, and also strengthen the collective institutional capital of the consulting industry thus legitimizing consulting services in broader sectors of society and facilitating access to requisite resources. Our findings counter the image of institutional entrepreneurship as individualistic, “heroic” action. We demonstrate how distributed, embedded actors can collectively shape the institutional context from within to enhance their institutional capital.

The Influence of Routine Interdependence and Skillful Accomplishment on the Coordination of Standardizing and Customizing

This paper advances understanding of the coordination of interdependence between multiple intersecting routines and its influence on the balancing of coexisting ostensive patterns. Building on a professional service routine—the deal appraisal routine—and its intersections with four related routines, we develop a dynamic framework that explains the coordination of standardization and flexibility in four ways. First, intersecting routines have shifting salience in the performance of a focal routine, and this shifting salience is enacted through professional skill and judgment. Second, each intersection amplifies pressure toward one or the other ostensive pattern thus introducing dynamism into the balancing of competing ostensive patterns. Third, professionals skillfully acknowledge these pressures from intersecting routines to orient toward one ostensive pattern and then reorient the performance of the routine toward the opposite ostensive pattern. Fourth, this balancing act, which we theorize as reciprocal task interdependence, occurs within the moment of performing each task, so providing a highly dynamic understanding of the association between routine interdependence and the coordination of coexisting ostensive patterns.

Changing Career Models and Capacity for Innovation in Professional Services

A number of professional sectors have recently moved away from their longstanding career model of up-or-out promotion and embraced innovative alternatives. Professional labor is a critical resource in professional service firms. Therefore, changes to these internal labor markets are likely to trigger other innovations, for example in knowledge management, incentive schemes and team composition. In this chapter we look at how new career models affect the core organizing model of professional firms and, in turn, their capacity for and processes of innovation. We consider how professional firms link the development of human capital and the division of professional labor to distinctive demands for innovation and how novel career systems help them respond to these demands.

Institutional entrepreneurship:a literature review and analysis of the maturing consulting field

With few exceptions (e.g. Fincham & Clark, 2002; Lounsbury, 2002, 2007; Montgomery & Oliver, 2007), we know little about how emerging professions, such as management consulting, professionalize and establish their services as a taken-for-granted element of social life. This is surprising given that professionals have long been recognized as “institutional agents” (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Scott, 2008) (see Chapter 17) and professionalization projects have been closely associated with institutionalization (DiMaggio, 1991). Therefore, in this chapter we take a closer look at a specific type of entrepreneurship in PSFs; drawing on the concept of “institutional entrepreneurship” (DiMaggio, 1988; Garud, Hardy, & Maguire, 2007; Hardy & Maguire, 2008) we describe some generic strategies by which proto-professions can enhance their “institutional capital” (Oliver, 1997), that is, their capacity to extract institutionally contingent resources such as legitimacy, reputation, or client relationships from their environment.

An institutional perspective on strategy as practice

Introduction Institutional scholars have recently started to reach out to strategy-as-practice concepts to better conceptualize institutional landscapes and the ways in which organizations construct and navigate them in practice. Specifically, they seek to engage SAP scholarship in order to enhance their theorizing of institutional logics (Thornton, Ocasio and Lounsbury 2012), ‘institutional complexity’ (Greenwood et al . 2011) and ‘institutional work’ (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006) and their understanding of the ‘micro-foundations’ of institutions (Powell and Colyvas 2008). Simultaneously, strategy-as-practice scholars have begun to look beyond the intra-organizational activities that have traditionally preoccupied them and to work at their stronger contextualization in the broader social orders that have been the hallmark of institutional research (Vaara and Whittington 2012; Whittington, in this volume). This rapprochement may appear unsurprising, given that both theoretical strands share common roots in the seminal works of Bourdieu (1977; 1990) and Giddens (1984). Much like siblings separated at birth, however, institutional and practice theories have gone on distinct journeys, characterized by different foci on the structure–agency spectrum and levels of analysis. While institutional scholarship through the 1990s often gave primacy to structure, stability and the macro-level contexts that condition organizations (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Greenwood et al . 2008; Scott 1987), strategy-as-practice scholars have emphasized agency, potential for change and the collective activities of individuals inside organizations (Chia and Holt 2009; Jarzabkowski 2005; Jarzabkowski and Wolf, in this volume). This history makes the recent re-engagement noteworthy and means that, much like reunited siblings with different views of the world, they can open each others eyes to new phenomena and start looking at familiar phenomena in new ways. The metaphorical notion of estrangement, reunion and mutual enrichment drives the structure of this chapter. In the second section we briefly trace the evolution of institutional theory to understand where and why it lost touch with practice theory and which issues have recently motivated it to reach out for re-engagement. The third section then outlines shared concerns and concepts over which institutional and strategy-as-practice scholars can connect and strike up fruitful conversations. The fourth section sketches the nascent insights that have recently emerged from some of those conversations. Finally, the conclusion summarizes the mutual benefits to be gained from blending institutional and SAP scholarship and outlines yet under-explored areas as avenues for future research.

In pursuit of creative compliance: innovation in professional service firms

In this chapter, we discuss the nature of innovation in professional service firms. We argue that the distinctive characteristics of these firms affect their innovation drivers, sources, processes and outcomes. We suggest that, paradoxically, innovation in professional services is primarily driven by a pursuit of compliance, rather than differentiation. Professionals are typically required to resolve situations in which their clients aim to comply with external constraints, but seek to do so in a creative way that is least compromising for their business goals. Thus, innovation in professional service firms is primarily driven by creative compliance.