Gastos no elegibles

Institutional theory considers the organisational field, rather than the organisation itself, to be the unit of analysis as it examines the pursuit of legitimacy through institutional change (Suddaby and Greenwood 2005). The notion of an organisational field “draws heavily on the social constructionist account of reality” with patterns of organisational interaction defined by the shared systems of meanings that establish field boundaries, field membership and define appropriate behaviours, structures and relationships (Greenwood et al. 2002, p59; Lawrence 1999). The following sections briefly examine the organisational field and the patterns of behaviour and organising, known as institutional templates, which diffuse inside them.

3.2.2.1 The organisational field

A central construct of institutional theory is the organisational field56 (Scott 1991), which has also been referred to as the institutional field57(DiMaggio and Powell 1991; Greenwood et al. 2002; Meyer and Rowan 1977), institutional sphere (Fligstein 1990), societal environment (Meyer 1994) and institutional environment (Scott and Meyer 1994). An organisational field is generally conceived of as,

… a community of organisations that partakes of a common meaning system and whose participants interact more frequently and fatefully with one another than with actors outside the field (Scott 1995, p56).

While institutional theorists initially conceptualised the field as the primary social setting of an organisation such as an industry or a nation-state (DiMaggio and Powell 1991), later descriptions suggested fields were constituted according to those issues important to the goals of a specific collection of organisations (Hoffman 1999). This issues-based view of the field reflected the mustering of various constituents “with incongruent purposes” rather than members possessing universal technologies or industries sharing common interests and “isomorphic dialogue” (Wooten and Hoffman 2008, p134). Organisation fields could therefore be differentiated from populations, industries or networks in that fields comprised a collection of “vertically and horizontally interlocking organisations” (Greenwood and Hinings 1996, pp1026-7), and that both “interact with one another and are subject to the same regulative, normative and cognitive institutional constraints” (Palmer et al. 2008, p742). Consequently, although the field could include any constituent which influences58 the organisation, such as government, resource providers, professional and trade associations, special interest groups and the general public, its boundaries are defined by shared cultural

56

Haveman and David (2008) argue that legitimacy is the central concept of institutional analysis (p579).

57

Meyer (2008) later offers definitial distinctions between institutional fields and organisational fields (see

p525). 58

and governance structures, rather than simply a discrete list of generic constituents

(DiMaggio and Powell 1991; Scott 1991, 2001; Wooten and Hoffman 2008).

Institutional theory suggests that “institutional change is the result of shifts in the underlying logic by which legitimacy is assessed” (Suddaby and Greenwood 2005, p35). Those fields assuming ideological consensus and a consistent set of social expectations are described as tightly coupled (Greenwood and Hinings 1996). In contrast, in fields where boundaries are less successfully defined and defended

(Scott 2001), known as loosely coupled fields, multiple competing ‘institutional logics’ may be present with field constituents jostling over “the definition of relevant issues and the form of institutions that will guide organisational behaviour” (Hoffman 1999, p352). Where institutional pressures present inconsistent cues or signals (DiMaggio and Powell 1991; Greenwood and Hinings 1996; Schneiberg and Lounsbury 2008; Scott 1991) space exists for idiosyncratic interpretation and either deliberate (agentic) or unconscious variations in practice (Greenwood and Hinings 1996; Hirsch 1997; Oliver 1991; Wooten and Hoffman 2008).

Consequently, organisational fields may become contested and dynamic, a “field of struggles” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992), “capable of moving toward something other than isomorphism” (Wooten and Hoffman 2008, p135). In reconciling contradictory institutional arrangements (Seo and Creed 2002) power relationships are revealed

(Lawrence 2008) and field participants are not assumed to “march quietly down the path toward homogeneity” but instead choose a course of action from a well-defined set of socially accepted, legitimate options (Wooten and Hoffman 2008, p135).

Fields, therefore, evolve through the revision and redefinition of field boundaries, changes in institutional logics, the influence of institutional entrepreneurs and shifting power balances and of field members (DiMaggio 1988; Fligstein 1997; Lawrence 1999). They are therefore instrumental to the processes by which socially constructed expectations and practices become disseminated and reproduced, as fields construct the legitimacy criteria that guides organisational behaviour (Aerts et al. 2006). The end result is that, over time, institutional influences become visible in patterns of structure or behaviour known as institutional templates.

3.2.2.2 Institutionalised patterns of behaviour (templates)

Institutional templates are diffused, rather than created, as a population of organisations inside an organisational field “unwittingly accept the prevailing template as the appropriate, right and proper way of doing things” and so converge to accepted patterns of behaviour and organising that originate and exist outside

individual organisations (Greenwood and Hinings 1996, p1027; Meyer and Rowan 1977). As transmission within a field from one set of actors (organisations) to another occurs, shared patterns or templates take on a rule-like and taken-for-granted status

(Scott and Meyer 1994; Zucker 1977) that can carry substantial mimetic legitimacy (see for example Carter and Mueller 2002). Tightly coupled fields, as described above, are perceived as having clearly legitimated organisational templates and highly articulated mechanisms (such as the state, professional associations, regulatory and governance agencies and organisational leaders) for transmitting those templates to other organisations within the field (Fligstein 1991; Greenwood and Hinings 1996, p1029; Kikulis et al. 1995; Tolbert 1985)

In a structured context, resistance to change the prevailing template will be high

(Lewin and Volberda 1999). Nevertheless, Greenwood and Hinings (1996) suggest that alternative templates may exist, albeit infrequently in tightly structured contexts and more frequently but less coherently formulated in less tightly coupled contexts (pp1030-1). For alternatives to become accessible however, the prevailing template needs to be seen as one set of rules, rather than the set of rules (Johnson et al. 2000). This may occur, for example, due to ‘normative fragmentation’ as increasing representation of alternative ideas leads to an erosion of commitment to a prevailing template (Greenwood and Hinings 1996; Oliver 1992) or critical evaluation suggests institutional templates have been inappropriately imported (Macaulay 2007).

Multiple institutional templates may therefore coexist and compete for legitimacy as, for example, the organisation moves from a template-in-use to an articulated alternative (Johnson et al. 1999; Johnson et al. 2000, p572; Newman 2000; Shaker et al. 2000). This change may be radical, revolutionary, discontinuous change from one template to another, or convergent, evolutionary, incremental change within an existing template (Greenwood and Hinings 1996; Scott 2001). It is possible because of the pervasive gap between micro (firm level) and macro (field level) frames which inevitably lead to the “adjustments, refinements, amendments, shortcuts, modifications, departures at the micro level” that take a collective toll on macro-level templates (Scott 2001, p188). Sjöstrand (1995) suggests this mismatch between micro and macro levels:

… is explained by the distance between the experiences, thoughts and actions of the many single individuals on the micro level on the one hand and by the content and regulations embedded in the socially constructed institutions on the macro level, reflecting more general perspectives in society, on the other (p20).

In many cases these change processes are not capable of overturning institutional templates on their own (Johnson et al. 1999); they need to be augmented by broader regulatory or other macro-level frameworks (Clarke 1999). Consequently, exogenous shocks, such as new regulation or technology, “creates slippage” between prevailing templates and operational demands (Barley 1986, p80) producing a period of instability and experimentation (Johnson et al. 2000) as actors do not necessarily align themselves clearly with the new template, but instead proceed with behaviours from the prevailing structures and practices and differentially adopt behaviours from an alternative template over time (Johnson et al. 2000).

Transformations in the relative salience and clarity of prescribed ideas about institutional templates are therefore driven by external pressures and rationalised myths – shifts in institutional logics and the strategic use of rhetoric (Greenwood and Hinings 1996; Suddaby and Greenwood 2005). This means organisations continue to respond to institutional pressures in rational ways, by endorsing generally accepted practices to appear legitimate via a synthesis “shaped and conditioned, on the one hand, by temporal-relational contexts of action and, on the other, by the dynamic element of agency itself” (Emirbayer and Mische 1998, p1004). The following section explores the influence of these institutional pressures in shaping institutionalised templates of organising and behaviour.