Patricia H. Thornton

Institutional logics and the historical contingency of power in organizations: Executive succession in the higher education publishing industry, 1958-1990

This article examines the historical contingency of executive power and succession in the higher education publishing industry. We combine interview data with historical analysis to identify how institutional logics changed from an editorial to a market focus. Event history models are used to test for differences in the effects of these two institutional logics on the positional, relational, and economic determinants of executive succession. The quantitative findings indicate that a shift in logics led to different determinants of executive succession. Under an editorial logic, executive attention is directed to author‐editor relationships and internal growth, and executive succession is determined by organization size and structure. Under a market logic, executive attention is directed to issues of resource competition and acquisition growth, and executive succession is determined by the product market and the market for corporate control.

The rise of the corporation in a craft industry: Conflict and conformity in institutional logics

This study tests a theory of how a craft- and profession-based industry adopted multidivisional organization, examining higher education publishing from 1958 through 1990. I combined interviews and...

Institutional Logics and Institutional Change in Organizations: Transformation in Accounting, Architecture, and Publishing

We contribute to the literature on institutional and organizational change by integrating two related areas of study: the theory and methods of analysis informed by the research on institutional logics and historical-event sequencing. Institutional logics provide the theory to understand how the content of culture influences organizational change; historical-event sequencing reveals the underlying patterns of cultural transformation. We apply this dual perspective to the cases of institutional stability and change in organizational governance in three industries: accounting, architecture, and higher-education publishing. Research on governance has focused on changes in organizational design between markets, hierarchies, and networks. Missing from this research is an understanding of how institutions at the wider societal level motivate organizations to adopt one of these governance forms over another. We examine how the governance of firms in these industries has been influenced by the institutional logics of the professions, the market, the state, and the corporation by focusing on three mechanisms – institutional entrepreneurs, structural overlap, and historical-event sequencing. Overall, our findings reveal how accounting was influenced by state regulation producing a punctuated equilibrium model, architecture by professional duality producing a cyclical model, and publishing by market rationalization producing an evolutionary model of institutional change in organizational governance.

Institutional Logics as Strategic Resources

We propose that institutional logics are resources organizations use to leverage their strategic choices. We argue that firms with an awareness of multiple available logics, expressed by a larger stock of competences and a broader industrial scope are more likely to add an institutional logic to their repertoire and to become purist in this new logic. We also hypothesize that a favorable opportunity set as expressed by status leads high and low status firms to add a logic but not to focus exclusively on this new logic. We examine our hypotheses in the French industrial design industry from 1989 to 2003 in which a managerialist logic emerged and prevailed along with the pre-existing institutional logics of modernism and formalism. Our findings contribute to theory on the relationship between organizations’ strategy and institutional change and partially address the paradox of why high-status actors play a key role in triggering institutional change when such change is likely to undermine the very basis of their social position and advantage

Assessing the costs and outcomes together: Cost effectiveness of two systems of acute psychiatric care

This paper describes the research findings and methodology used to evaluate the relative cost effectiveness of two systems of acute psychiatric care: system I when only a general hospital unit was available and system 2 when a psychiatric health facility was added to the general hospital service system. The cost analysis methodology is described in detail. Theta, cost-outcome matrices, and data analytic techniques useful in making cost effectiveness judgments and program policy decisions are demonstrated. Problems associated with conducting this type of research in a service delivery system are described and discussed. Clinical outcome in system 1, when only the general hospital unit was available, was consistently better. Per diem costs for system 2, consisting of the general hospital unit and a nonhospital psychiatric health facility, were significantly less. However, the increased length of stay for system 2 patients made episode cost comparisons nearly equal between the two systems of health care. Results suggested the need for modifications in the new service system and the importance of assessing the cost and outcome of treatment simultaneously in making program policy decisions.

The Price of Admission: Organizational Deference as Strategic Behavior

Why would market organizations engage in symbolic and material acts conveying appreciation and respect to other organizations that confirm their inferior position in an established hierarchy? The authors argue that deference is the price outsider organizations pay to pass categorical and symbolic boundaries and gain acceptance in contexts where insiders regard them as impure. Because not all organizations can or are willing to pay the price, deference varies according to positional, dispositional, and interactional characteristics. The authors examine and find support for the view of organizational deference as strategic behavior using empirical evidence on market finance organizations investing in film production in France over two decades. The analysis expands research on nonconflictual interactions and symbolic boundaries in market settings.

Culture and Institutional Logics

This article defines key assumptions of the institutional logics perspective (ILP) particular to the relationship between institutional logics and culture. It discusses central debates in the sociology of culture to highlight affinities between theoretical issues in the ILP and the sociology of culture. Implications are discussed for advances in the sociology of organizations and culture and research in the substantive domains of morality, justification, and symbolic management.

Who is more likely to walk the talk? The symbolic management of entrepreneurial intentions by gender and work status

ABSTRACT Loose coupling as an antecedent to symbolic management is rarely if ever studied at the individual level of analysis. Yet, individuals are central agents in starting and developing new businesses. Inspired by cultural and institutional theory, this study examines the cognitive coupling and symbolic management of entrepreneurial intentions of individuals as a consequence of the cultural legitimacy of entrepreneurship in society. The research design first replicates the well-established positive relationship between high self-efficacy and high entrepreneurial intentions in a heterogenous sample and then demonstrates the interaction effects with cultural legitimacy and domain independent subgroups, gender and work status. Using random sample survey data from 68 countries findings show that men and the employed are more likely to loosely couple and symbolically manage entrepreneurial intentions to found a new business than women and the unemployed. Women and the unemployed are more likely to walk the talk. This study contributes to the micro-foundations of cultural entrepreneurship and the ‘hypocrisy story’ in neo-institutional and world society theory with implications for entrepreneurship policy on gender and work status.

The Business of Culture: Strategic Perspectives on Entertainment and Media

The Business of Culture, Lampel, Shamsie, and Lant’s new edited volume on the strategic management of cultural industries, is worth readers’ attention for a variety of reasons. Typically, readers associate cultural industries with such products as films, books, building designs, fashion, and music, products that appeal to aesthetic or expressive tastes more than to the utilitarian aspects of customers’ needs. While Scott, in chapter 2, notes the proliferation of work on how cultural industries produce culture, Lampel, Shamsie, and Lant cut a fresh angle that focuses on the strategic management of cultural industries. Why is this important to the fields of cultural sociology, organization theory, and business strategy?

Corporate hierarchies in markets: The effects of structure and strategy on organizational survival

Although corporate hierarchies are a dominant organizational form in U.S. industry, their effects on the survival of component business units remains relatively understudied. We examine the effects...