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Institutional Logics in Action

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INSTITUTIONAL LOGICS IN
ACTION
Michael Lounsbury and Eva Boxenbaum
ABSTRACT
This double volume presents state-of-the-art research and thinking on
the dynamics of actors and institutional logics. In the introduction, we
briey sketch the roots and branches of institutional logics scholarship
before turning to the new buds of research on the topic of how actors
engage institutional logics in the course of their organizational practice.
We introduce an exciting line of new works on the meta-theoretical
foundations of logics, institutional logic processes, and institutional
complexity and organizational responses. Collectively, the papers in this
volume advance the very prolic stream of research on institutional logics
by deepening our insight into the active use of institutional logics in
organizational action and interaction, including the institutional effects of
such (inter)actions.
Keywords: Institutional logics; institutional complexity; practice;
institution

Institutional Logics in Action, Part A

Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Volume 39A, 322
Copyright r 2013 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 0733-558X/doi:10.1108/S0733-558X(2013)0039A&B004

MICHAEL LOUNSBURY AND EVA BOXENBAUM

Research on institutional logics has become one of the most rapidly growing
intellectual domains in organization theory. Testifying to this trend is the
growing proliferation of logics articles in top sociology and management
journals (e.g., American Journal of Sociology, Administrative Science
Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management
Review), the growing citations to these works, and the fact that logics
research has become one of the largest submission topic areas at the
Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of
Management (in 2012, it was second only to the topical area of corporate
governance and strategy). Since the initial Friedland and Alford (1991)
statement on institutional logics, there has been steady growth in the
development of theory and empirical research. The Institutional Logics
Perspective (Thornton, Ocasio, & Lounsbury, 2012) integrates this line of
inquiry into a multidimensional, cross-level model and framework,
offering a focal point for the gathering of scholars forging a new wave
of institutional theorizing. Encounters among scholars of institutional
logics manifest at varied conferences, including the European Group on
Organization Studies and the Academy of Management. Logics research
includes that which is qualitatively as well as quantitatively oriented and
embraces macro-historical as well as micro-processual approaches to
social life.
The papers assembled in this special two-volume edition of Research in
the Sociology of Organizations were seeded by a conference held in Banff,
Alberta (Canada) in June 2012 entitled Organizing Institutions: Creating,
Enacting and Reacting to Institutional Logics. The conference was the
third in a series of conferences sponsored by the ABC Network1 a broad
group of institutional scholars co-organized by the Copenhagen Business
School, Harvard University, and University of Alberta. The conference
itself was premised on the integration of North American and Scandinavian
institutional ideas and research communities.
Research on institutional logics, seeded in North America but with
contributions now regularly produced by both European and North
American scholars (almost equally), has broadened over the past decade
or so to focus not only on the effects of shifts in dominant logics, but also on
understanding the implications of plural logics and how organizations
respond to institutional complexity. This development reects a growing
recognition that conicting and overlapping pressures stemming from multiple
institutional logics create interpretive and strategic ambiguity for organizational leaders and participants (Greenwood, Raynard, Kodeih, Micelotta, &
Lounsbury, 2011). These directions articulate well with Scandinavian

Institutional Logics in Action

research that has simultaneously pursued a long-standing interest in how

organizations respond to institutional pressures (Boxenbaum & Jonsson,
2008; Boxenbaum & Strandgaard Pedersen, 2009; Westenholz, Strandgaard
Pedersen, & Dobbin, 2006). For instance, Scandinavian scholars have
illuminated how sensemaking (Lefsrud & Meyer, 2012; Westenholz, 2006)
and identity construction (Meyer & Hammerschmid, 2006; Strandgaard
Pedersen & Dobbin, 2006) processes relate to the integration of multiple
institutional logics in organizational practice (Borum & Westenholz, 1995;
Byrkjeot, Strandgaard Pedersen, & Svejenova, 2013; Waldorff & Greenwood, 2011; Westenholz, 2012), sometimes with an explicit aim of shielding
organizations from institutional pressures (Alvarez, Mazza, Strandgaard
Pedersen, & Svejenova, 2005), or shifting the balance of logics in their
organizational and institutional environments (Boxenbaum, 2006; Boxenbaum & Battilana, 2005; Meyer & Hollerer, 2010). Efforts to integrate these
two complementary streams of research, coupled with the recent formulation of theory (e.g., Thornton et al., 2012), led to a call for papers that
embraces a view of logics that is more uid and loosely coupled to actors
and their identities and practices to focalize attention on institutional logics
in action.
While the institutional logics literature has been fast moving, there is no
need here to provide an extensive literature review since there are many
good recent review and theory papers (e.g., Greenwood et al., 2011;
Pache & Santos, 2010; Thornton & Ocasio, 2008), as well as a comprehensive book on the topic (Thornton et al., 2012), which provide key
sources for those wanting to have a more encompassing understanding of
the terrain. Thus, in this brief introduction, we simply sketch in broad
contours how the papers in this double volume are situated in relation to
the recent development of institutional logics research. We then provide
an overview of the individual papers, highlighting how they each propel
the logics research agenda forward. What emerges clearly from the papers
in this double volume is that the institutional logics perspective provides a
widely resonant and generative set of ideas that speak to many of the
problems that have been plaguing neo-institutional theory for decades
(DiMaggio & Powell, 1991; Scott, 1995). Relative to the early neoinstitutional emphases on isomorphism, institutional logics scholars have
embraced a wider set of core foundations than those undergirding the initial
neo-institutional project (e.g., social constructivism and a focus on culture
and meaning making). Like predecessors such as W. Richard Scott, a big
tent approach is maintained, welcoming criticism and scholarly diversity
as a way to drive institutional theorizing forward with renewed vibrancy.

MICHAEL LOUNSBURY AND EVA BOXENBAUM

INSTITUTIONAL LOGICS: FROM CRITIQUE TO

MAINSTREAM PERSPECTIVE
Like the legitimation and diffusion of an initially heretical or marginal
practice (Strang & Soule, 1998), institutional logics research was seeded by a
rogue, but now highly cited, paper the Friedland and Alford (1991) paper in
the so-called Orange Book edited by Powell and Dimaggio that was an
explicit critique of the then-dominant neo-institutional approach centered on
organizational elds (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). An outsider to the main
gatherings (workshops, conferences, etc.) of neo-institutionalists, Friedland
had not previously been invited to an institutionalist gathering until the 2012
Banff conference. It is a credit to the cosmopolitanism of DiMaggio and
Powell that they invited the Friedland and Alford piece as a way to test the
boundaries of the conversation.
The Friedland and Alford paper is entitled Bringing Society Back in:
Symbols, Practices, and Institutional Contradictions. It begins with a
critique of approaches that have retreated from theorizing the role of broader
social forces. These not only include the rational choice approaches in
economics, sociology, and political science that focus attention on instrumental behavior and rational action, but also include organization theories
that either isolate organizations from their broader societal contexts (e.g.,
resource dependence) or reduce society to an abstract environment (e.g.,
population ecology) or an organizational eld (e.g., neo-institutionalism).
This critique motivates the development of an institutional logics approach
that provides a nonfunctionalist conception of society as a potentially
contradictory interinstitutional system (Friedland & Alford, 1991, p. 240).
They go on to talk about the importance of three levels of analysis that
involve the study of individuals competing and negotiating, organizations in
conict and coordination, and institutions in contradiction and interdependency (pp. 240241). At the center of the imagery laid out is the notion of
institutional contradiction and the fact that institutional logics must be
understood as simultaneously material and symbolic.
Citations to the Friedland and Alford paper began right after its publication, and grew through the 1990s. However, it was not until the 1997
publications by Townley and by Haveman and Rao, as well as the 1999
publication by Thornton and Ocasio, that the concept of institutional logic
advanced by Friedland and Alford began to be a focus of theoretical and
empirical development, spawning a broader intellectual movement around
an institutional logics perspective (see Thornton et al., 2012). And even

Institutional Logics in Action

though there was a smattering of papers in the early 2000s, intellectual

activity began to grow dramatically by the later part of the decade. While
there is still much work that needs to be done to understand where new
logics come from, and how they change and affect various behaviors and
outcomes, the rising volume of theoretical and empirical work on
institutional logics suggests that it has become a mainstream area of active
scholarly development. Several papers in this double volume speak to the
wide theoretical scope of institutional logics research.
Much of the initial empirical research on logics tended to feature
industry- and eld-level analyses with a broader historical avor, documenting the effects of logics as they shifted over time (e.g., Haveman & Rao,
1997; Lounsbury, 2002; Thornton, 2002; Thornton & Ocasio, 1999; but see
Townley, 1997 on logics as sources of resistance). However, the literature
expanded its scope quickly to include a focus on the complexity of plural
logics as well as more ne-grained studies of how logics affect the behavior
of individuals and groups in and across organizations. For instance,
Borum and Westenholz (1995) showed how an organization continuously
integrated elements of new institutional logics into its organizational
practice without fully discarding old ones, which allowed the organization
to maintain its operational efciency while also assuring legitimacy over
time and with different constituents. Alvarez et al. (2005) found that
lmmakers tended to couple artistic pressures for distinctiveness (i.e., the
logic of art) with business pressures for prots (i.e., the logic of business) in
order to achieve optimal distinctiveness in the eld of cinema. Elaborating
on the processes by which organizations manage institutional complexity,
Greenwood, D az, Li, and Lorente (2010) showed how potentially incompatible demands stemming from plural institutional logics are perceived and
get worked out inside organizations. Greenwood et al. (2011) provide a
theoretical framework to capture how the structural dimensions of elds
and organizational attributes affect organizational responses to institutional
complexity. This double volume contains numerous works that contribute
to advancing insight into how organizations respond to multiple logics
across an array of institutional elds.
Research has also explored how actors and interaction patterns affect the
overall balance of logics in organizational elds. For instance, Rao, Monin,
and Durand (2003) highlighted the relationship between social movements
and logics in the context of the rise of nouvelle cuisine in France. They
showed how identity movements can lead to the abandonment of traditional
logics and role identities and the embrace of new ones. In general, the

MICHAEL LOUNSBURY AND EVA BOXENBAUM

literature that has developed at the interface of organizational theory and

social movements (Davis, McAdam, Scott, & Zald, 2005) has provided an
important motor for a richer theorization of agency and micro-mechanisms
in institutional logics research (see Schneiberg & Lounsbury, 2008 for a
review; see also Schneiberg, 2007; Schneiberg & Clemens, 2006).
An additional approach to studying actions and interactions with
institutional effects is reected in the institutional entrepreneurship and
work literatures (e.g., Battilana, Leca, & Boxenbaum, 2009; Lawrence &
Suddaby, 2006). Engaging the theoretical conversation on logics, scholars
have focused on how actors negotiate environments that are constituted by
plural logics (Boxenbaum, 2006; Kraatz & Block, 2008). For instance,
Battilana and Dorado (2010) showed how organizations can successfully
hybridize two logics by attending to their human resource selection and
socialization processes. Lawrence, Suddaby, and Leca (2009) further draw
attention to the potentially unintended institutional effects of actors
behaviors and interactions in contexts characterized by multiple logics.
Identity represents another important analytical focal point for studying
processes and institutional effects of (inter-)actions in multiple logic
environments. For instance, process-based studies by Reay and (Bob)
Hinings (2005, 2009) documented how competing logics relate to actors and
their identities, showing how rivalry between logics is actively managed
through collaborative relationships among actors. Waldorff and Greenwood (2011) further show the importance of actors professional identity
and political afliation in shaping their conception of a new health care
organization in local communities. Institutional logics offer not only frames
of reference, argue Meyer, Egger-Peitler, Hollerer, and Hammerschmid
(2013), but also social identities and vocabularies of motives for actors.
More generally, research on how organizations and other groups establish or
alter their identities and core practices under conditions of plural institutional
logics has begun to form a scholarly stream (e.g., Dunn & Jones, 2010;
Glynn & Lounsbury, 2005; Jones, Maoret, Massa, & Svejenova, 2012;
Lok, 2010; Lounsbury, 2007; Marquis & Lounsbury, 2007; Meyer &
Hammerschmid, 2006; Nigam & Ocasio, 2010; Pache & Santos, 2010;
Purdy & Gray, 2009; Smets, Morris, & Greenwood, 2012; Tracey, Phillips, &
Jarvis, 2011).
Thornton et al. (2012) provide theoretical models to integrate and guide
research on the dynamics of practice and identities in and across
organizations. Extending their development of microfoundations for the
institutional logics perspective, they highlight how decision making,
sensemaking, and collective mobilization play a key role in linking more

Institutional Logics in Action

micro-social interactions to efforts to somehow alter extant organizational

identities and practices. Building on Lounsbury and Crumley (2007), they
direct attention to how anomalous practices can provide a trigger for not
only the refashioning of identities and practices, but also the spawning
of new organizations and organizational communities. Thornton et al.
(2012) additionally lay out theoretical guideposts for the study of the interinstitutional system, the emergence and evolution of eld-level logics,
with implications for the historical and comparative analysis of institutions,
strategy, and international business, and the study of organizations and
society more generally. The papers in this volume extend these developments
further, contributing not only to our understanding of logics in action,
but also to the continuing eshing out of the institutional logics perspective.

PAPERS IN THIS SPECIAL DOUBLE VOLUME

As a whole, the papers gathered in this special double volume cover a
tremendous amount of theoretical and empirical terrain. They are assembled
under three main headers: Meta-theoretical Issues and Perspectives
and Institutional Logic Processes in the rst volume, and Institutional
Complexity and Organizational Responses in the second volume. The
section on Meta-theoretical Issues and Perspectives contains three papers
by: (1) Friedland, (2) Jones, Boxenbaum, and Anthony, and (3) Zilber.
The paper by Friedland (2013) entitled, God, Love and Other Good
Reasons for Practice: Thinking Through Institutional Logics, is based
upon his keynote address at the 2012 Banff conference. While the Friedland
and Alford (1991) piece is quite well known, Friedland has continued to
develop further his notion of logics (e.g., Friedland, 2002, 2009, 2011), and
in this paper extends his thinking even further by engaging the relationship
between institutional logics and Max Webers polytheistic theory of value
spheres. It provides a profound reection and provocation, urging us to
engage wide-ranging ideas in the sociology of religion and contemporary
theory. Friedland argues that institutional life does not operate based
solely on a cognitivism, through differentially activated schemas, a takenfor-grantedness y It demands myriad moments of located passion. This
passion or love is for a substance or godhead (Weber, 1968/1946),
which provides the underlying foundation for the operability and power of
logics.
While Friedland raises the issue of materiality as a key theoretical issue
that requires further exploration, Jones, Boxenbaum, and Anthony (2013),

10

MICHAEL LOUNSBURY AND EVA BOXENBAUM

in The Immateriality of Material Practices in Institutional Logics, point

to the absence of material objects in the existing formulations and empirical
literature on institutional logics. Their literature review shows that the
material dimension of logics, which Friedland and Alford (1991) emphasized as coexisting with symbolic features, has been interpreted narrowly as
referring only to practices and social structure. Calling for attention to
material objects, they point to adjacent lines of inquiry from sociology and
anthropology that may be helpful to illuminate this dimension of
institutional logics and its potential role in institutional dynamics.
The last paper in the Meta-theoretical Issues and Perspectives section
by Zilber (2013), entitled Institutional Logics and Institutional Work:
Should They Be Agreed? addresses the relationship between the institutional logics perspective (e.g., Thornton et al., 2012) and the literature on
institutional work (e.g., Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). She provides a critical
reection on these two streams of institutional scholarship, pointing out
their similarities and differences, as well as their respective strengths and
weaknesses. Complaining that each school sees itself as sufcient to
colonize the eld and to allow scholars to inquire fruitfully into the entire
gamut of issues covered by institutional theory, Zilber makes the case for
an analytic division of labor between them. We think there is certainly
enough intellectual terrain available for such cohabitation, but echoing
Thornton et al. (2012, pp. 179180), we would encourage efforts to bridge
these communities and develop more integrative scholarly conversations
and projects.
The subsequent section on Institutional Logic Processes contains six
empirical papers that provide analyses of elds with varied scopes. The
paper by Waldorff, Reay, and Goodrick (2013), A Tale of Two Countries:
How Different Constellations of Logics Impact Action, analyzes mechanisms by which logics can simultaneously constrain and enable action as
exemplied by a comparative case study of health care initiatives in
Denmark and Canada. They nd that the presence of an inuential logic
and an additive relationship between logics constrained action, while action
was enabled under conditions where alternative logics gained in strength,
where logics were segmented and relationships among logics were
facilitative. This paper importantly adds to our understanding of the
conditions under which logic plurality can afford discretion on the part of
actors, suggesting that the partial autonomy of actors from logics
(Thornton et al., 2012) is a matter for empirical investigation.
Misutka, Coleman, Jennings, and Hoffman (2013) focus attention on
issues of power and resistance in their study, Processes for Retrenching

Institutional Logics in Action

11

Logics: The Alberta Oil Sands Case, 20082011. They puzzle about the
conditions under which signicant anomalies may not generate fundamental
changes in practices, identities, and institutional logics, which extend
the process models forwarded by Lounsbury and Crumley (2007) and
Thornton et al. (2012). They highlight three retrenchment processes, cultural
positioning, behavioral resistance, and feedback shaping, which impede
innovation. Their paper signals the fruitfulness and need for the more direct
incorporation of power and politics in institutional logics research, as well
as the need to delineate the mechanisms that propel as well as inhibit
change.
In Institutional Logics as Strategic Resources, Durand, Szostak,
Jourdan, and Thornton (2013) argue that institutional logics can provide
key resources for organizational strategy. Drawing on a study of the
French industrial design industry, they show how rms may strategically
embrace additional logics, and possibly abandon ones once held dear, as a
result of their more cosmopolitan awareness of available logics. Their
arguments help to importantly link research in strategic management to
the institutional logics perspective, highlighting the utility of exploring how
logic dynamics are interpenetrated with and can inuence the strategic
choices of rms.
Pouthier, Steele, and Ocasio (2013) track the intertwining of institutional
logics in collective identities in their paper, From Agents to Principles: The
Changing Relationship between Hospitalist Identity and Logics of Health
care. In particular, they attend to changes in the strength, content, and
permanence of logic-identity associations, and explore the conditions under
which such associations might be eschewed. Drawing on an inductive case
study of the development of the hospitalist identity in the U.S. health care
eld, they propose several mechanisms through which logic-identity
associations may be weakened. Clearly, much more research is required to
understand the relationship of logics and identities (collective and individual), especially how they become fully or partially coupled/decoupled,
and how these different kinds of situations may affect social interaction and
associated behavioral outcomes.
In Legacies of Logics: Sources of Community Variation in CSR
Implementation in China, Raynard, Lounsbury, and Greenwood (2013)
employ a cross-level comparative research design to explore how the
legacies of previously dominant logics might be shaping organizational
behavior. Focusing on the spread of corporate social responsibility (CSR)
initiatives among Chinese corporations, important imprinting effects as well
as regional variations from the East, West, and South are identied. The

12

MICHAEL LOUNSBURY AND EVA BOXENBAUM

authors argue that these are linked to the legacies of state logics associated
with former leaders Mao and Deng. While this paper contributes to our
understanding of how Western frames and practices (e.g., CSR) are
variously penetrating Chinese rms, it raises provocative questions about
which aspects of once-dominant logics might be more likely to endure and
which are likely to fade away. We know very little about the legacies of
logics and the mechanisms by which they continue to shape organizational
behavior.
Schneiberg (2013) provocatively explores the utility of more or less
agentic focused institutionalisms in Lost in Transposition? (A Cautionary
Tale): The Bank of North Dakota and Prospects for Reform in American
Banking. The case of the Bank of North Dakota is a fascinating tale of
various efforts to transpose a model state-community hybrid institution,
that helped the people of North Dakota weather the recent nancial crisis
better than most, to other states interested in constructing more communityoriented solutions to nance. Schneiberg highlights how many conditions
identied in the literature as favorable to institutional entrepreneurship were
present, yet all efforts to transpose this model failed. Schneibergs paper
highlights the need to study failure cases more intently something that has
been woefully missing in the literature on agency and institutional dynamics.
He argues for scholarship that more carefully situates actors in their
contexts and engages more structuralist imageries and approaches, which
takes seriously the multilevel nature of institutional systems (see also
Schneiberg, 2007). Schneibergs call resonates with the institutional logics
perspective (Thornton et al., 2012).
The second volume comprises 11 papers that thematically address
Institutional Complexity and Organizational Responses. In Embedded
in Hybrid Contexts: How Individuals in Organizations Respond to
Competing Institutional Logics, Pache and Santos (2013) develop novel
theory about how individuals inside organizations experience and react to
competing institutional logics. They theorize how the degree of adherence to
a logic relates to different kinds of responses (ignorance, compliance,
resistance, combination, or compartmentalization) to situations involving
competing logics. Their aim is to contribute further to the microfoundations of the institutional logics perspective by focalizing the behavior of
individuals and to catalyze further research on how the actions of
individuals in an organization contribute to the saliency and dominance
of particular logics in an organization as well as the construction of hybrid
forms. These are all important issues that require systematic scholarly
attention.

Institutional Logics in Action

13

Jarzabkowski, Smets, Bednarek, Burke, and Spee (2013) call for more
attention to practice and practice theories in their paper, Institutional
Ambidexterity: Leveraging Institutional Complexity in Practice. They
challenge the literature on institutional ambidexterity, including how it is
invoked in theorizing how organizations respond to institutional complexity
(e.g., Greenwood et al., 2011), and provide a practice-based conceptual
framework to more appropriately guide the study of ambidexterity under
conditions of novel or routine institutional complexity. Since the study of
practice is central to the institutional logics perspective (Friedland & Alford,
1991; Thornton et al., 2012), it would be particularly fruitful to engage such
wider conversations and ideas on practice to reimagine and guide research
on the dynamics of institutional complexity.
In their paper, Beyond the Family Firm: Reasserting the Inuence of the
Family Institutional Logic across Organizations, Fairclough and Micelotta
(2013) argue that the institutional logics literature, and organization theory
more generally, has not yet accounted for the profound and pervasive effects
of the institutional logic of family. They document how in the highly
professionalized Italian law rm eld, rms continue to be inuenced by the
family logic and resist foreign capitalist intrusions. Given that, they examine
a country where one would expect the family logic to be particularly
pronounced, more comparative country research is required to assess
whether and how the family logic has similar effects in other settings.
Hills, Voronov, and Hinings (2013) Putting New Wine In Old Bottles:
Utilizing Rhetorical History To Overcome Stigma Associated With A
Previously Dominant Logic, explore how Ontario wineries try to project a
modern, high-quality image. Drawing on rhetorical history analysis, they
highlight the challenges of adhering to a new dominant, ne winemaking
logic, as the Ontario wine industry tried to shift from a focus on low-quality
mass production to a high-quality craft. As part of this process, wineries
also had to try to distance themselves from their original, but now
stigmatized, low-quality, mass production logic, by telling stories that
selectively and creatively depicted their historical origins. Such forms of
cultural entrepreneurship (Lounsbury & Glynn, 2001) require much more
detailed attention, and future research should detail in more depth how
stories are creatively constructed with vocabularies associated with different
logics (Loewenstein, Ocasio, & Jones, 2012), and how that relates to
outcomes such as industry and rm legitimation and performance.
The next three papers shed varied light on CSR, a topic that has attracted
much scholarly interest as of late. In Imageries of Corporate Social
Responsibility: Visual Recontextualization and Field-Level Meaning,

14

MICHAEL LOUNSBURY AND EVA BOXENBAUM

Hollerer, Jancsary, Meyer, and Vettori (2013) study how Austrian rms use
visual artifacts, which they label imageries-of-practice, to translate CSR,
a globally theorized practice model. Marshaling evidence based on over
1,600 images in corporate CSR reports, they argue that shared visual
language plays a crucial, and largely unexplored, role in the management of
institutional complexity as well as the emergence and reconguration of
eld-level logics. Expanding the range of cultural entrepreneurship research
beyond verbal vocabularies, the study imageries-of-practice provides an
interesting new direction for research on institutional logics and organizational behavior (see also Meyer, Hollerer, Jancsary, & van Leeuwen, 2013).
The study of imageries-of-practice also connects to rhetorical history as
the translation of abstract global ideas into concrete local knowledge can
link the past to the present and future.
Glynn and Raffaelli (2013), in Logic Pluralism, Organizational Design,
and Practice Adoption: The Structural Embeddedness of CSR Programs,
draw on a survey and archival data from 161 Fortune 500 rms to explore
how CSR programs get instantiated. Investigating core claims about
institutional complexity, Greenwood et al. (2011) nd that rms segment
practices into units that align with the logic emphasized by the CSR practice
being adopted. CSR practices with a perceived business benet (consistent
with a market logic) tended to be housed in mainline business units, while
CSR practices lacking a business case (and justied via a community logic)
are more likely to be located in corporate or philanthropic foundations.
Future research should probe in more depth how institutional logics shape
the adoption and implementation of practices inside organizations, and how
these processes reinforce or perhaps provide opportunities for the alteration
of organizational design.
In Strange Brew: Bridging Logics via Institutional Bricolage and the
Reconstitution of Organizational Identity, Christiansen and Lounsbury
(2013) explore how institutional complexity may be resolved through what
they label institutional bricolage, which they dene as the process by
which actors inside an organization combine elements from different logics
to construct new artifacts. Drawing on an illustrative case study of the
Carlsberg Brewery group and their development of a Responsible Drinking
Guide Book, they argue that institutional bricolage requires the problematization and renegotiation of an organizations identity. They document
how the Responsible Drinking Guide Book relied on the integration of
elements from social responsibility and market logics, which required the
creative use of organizational resources differentially located across time
and space. This study highlights the fruitfulness of bridging the literatures

Institutional Logics in Action

15

on institutional logics and organizational identity, and suggests the need for
more penetrating intra-organizational studies of how institutional complexity is perceived and resolved.
The paper by Vican and Pernell-Gallagher, Instantiation of Institutional
Logics: The Business Case for Diversity and the Prevalence of Diversity
Mentoring Practices, develops a process theory of logic instantiation based
on a study of the eld of corporate diversity management. Focusing on
explaining variation in the adoption of diversity mentoring practices, they
nd that logic instantiation was inuenced by various factors including the
characteristics and perceptions of diversity managers, and organizational
goals. They highlight that issues related to power and social skill inuence
interpretive work and new practice adoption. Echoing other studies in the
volume, they point out that organizational design importantly affects how
organizations cope with institutional complexity. This study also points to
the need to account for the role of key individual actors within an organization, including how they are able to mediate between external demands and
opportunities related to plural logics, and the internal dynamics of organizing. We expect to see much more research in this direction in the future
expanding our understanding of sources of practice variation as well as the
management of institutional complexity.
Fengs (2013) study, The Internal Complexity of Market Logics:
Financial Sophistication and Price Determination, shifts the study of
complexity beyond individual rms to explore variability within institutional
orders in this paper, that of the market. Drawing on interviews with
investment bankers who underwrite initial public offerings (IPOs), Feng
explores the multiplicity of market logics and their relationship to pricing
outcomes. He argues that market logics are internally complex and can
support a variety of pricing orientations, and shows that underwriters
construct different hybrid market logics through the deceptive use of market
logic vocabulary to mask their own power and interests. Thus, logic hybridity
for Feng stems from the power and status associated with particular
investment banks and investment bankers. Demonstrating the fruitfulness of
the institutional logics perspective to core questions in economic sociology,
this paper paves a road for future research on market logics and pricing.
The last two papers provide key methodological contributions to the
study of institutional logics. In their provocative study, Taking Stock of
Institutional Complexity: Anchoring a Pool of Institutional Logics into the
Interinstitutional System with a Descendent Hierarchical Analysis,
Daudigeos, Boutinot, and Jaumier (2013) focus attention on how logics
evolve in a eld over time. They employ a novel methodology, descendent

16

MICHAEL LOUNSBURY AND EVA BOXENBAUM

hierarchical classication modeling, for measuring eld-level institutional

complexity, and track the composition and change of six logics over a period
of one century in the French construction industry. This important study
highlights a critical focal point for future institutional logics research,
namely the process of how logics evolve over time (see also Chapter 7 of
Thornton et al., 2012). In exemplifying a novel methodology, it also points
to the need to perhaps develop new kinds of methodological approaches in
order to better study such phenomena.
Finally, Weber, Patel, and Heinze (2013), in From Cultural Repertoires
to Institutional Logics: A content-Analytic Method, propose a systematic
method, rooted in a repertoire view of culture (Swidler, 1986; Weber, 2005),
for studying logics over time. Their approach embraces quantitative text
analytic methods and focuses on identifying the cultural categories or
elements that comprise logics as well as the dimensions that indicate whether
a cultural system is more or less structured. They draw on illustrative data
from the eld of alternative livestock agriculture, and detail a seven-step
research process for analyzing logic construction. Methodological advances,
such as those signaled in the nal two papers of this volume, will no
doubt provide a key motor for the next wave of scholarship on institutional
logics.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
In the 1980s, the new institutionalism burst on the scene and provided a
foundation for the development of scholars and scholarship through the
study of isomorphism and diffusion using event history modeling
techniques. Since then, institutional theory has been rejuvenated, invigorated, and expanded in multiple ways. Extending this tradition, institutional
logics research promises to renew the institutional approach to organizations by providing an integrative and coherent theoretical foundation for a
new line of institutionalist scholarship; though theoretically diverging from
early new institutionalist statements (e.g., DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) in
fundamental ways, the institutional logics perspective retains important
continuities with its intellectual roots, including the embrace of foundational
intellectual commitments, a cosmopolitan orientation toward scholarship,
and a profound sense of community that W. Richard Scott and many other
scholars have built, cherished, and nurtured since the late 1970s.
It is clear that research on institutional logics is providing a generative
and energizing focal point for scholarly development, one that enhances our

17

Institutional Logics in Action

understanding of society and organizing processes. We believe that the

papers in this special double volume reect this generativity, providing a
variety of novel contributions to knowledge, pointing to many fruitful
avenues for future research and helping to consolidate key lines of
development while simultaneously expanding the scope of institutional
logics research. To wit, this volume signals the vibrancy of the institutional
logics perspective institutional theory is indeed alive and well!

NOTE
1. The ABC conferences were nanced through a network grant from the Danish
Council for Independent Research Social Sciences in collaboration with
participating institutions.

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