Zietsma and Lawrence’s (2010) exploration into institutional work within the context of boundary and practice work focuses on the harvesting practices and decision authority in the British Columbian coastal forest industry. This study conceives the role of institutional work as transforming organizational fields through an
exploration into the actors who create, maintain and disrupt practices that are
considered to be legitimate in the boundaries and fields of different groups (ibid). It also explores the boundary and practice work of actors that underpin cycles of institutional innovation, conflict, stability and re-stabilisation and how these are influenced by the practices of undertaking the boundary and practice work of a different institutional process (Ibid). Lawrence, Leca and Zilber (2013) highlight the importance of this work in producing an integrated model that provides the
opportunity to gain an appreciation of how institutions are created maintained and disrupted.
The introduction of change into an environment operating established ways of working is considered by Reay, et al., (2006) in their study involving the legitimization of a new nursing practitioner role. This study considers how the
efforts of actors can achieve this through a series of small gains to achieve success. It also identifies the role that middle managers can able to play in achieving change. The observation that middle managers facilitate change at upper organizational levels recognises their involvement in change initiatives (Ibid). More importantly the study highlights how middle managers manipulate their embeddedness to engender or dissuade change initiative and how this recognition might be useful for other studies (Ibid).
Suddaby and Viale’s (2011) study of professional projects provides an example of institutional work associated with creating an institution. This research reveals the crucial yet very concealed role undertaken by professional workers in this area of activity. Conceiving projects as vehicles that engender institutional change it
explores the efforts of professional actors as they purposefully utilize their skills and authority to create a new activity including introducing new individuals, procedures and social activities (Ibid). This is achieved by professionals utilising their
skilfulness to both challenge and provide definitions for a new area of activity including mobilising actors and resources to occupy this. This also enables them to establish boundaries and define rules and measures (Ibid). This study also
highlights the requirement for more research into the way professionals use communication skills to mobilise resources to effect change initiatives (Ibid).
Another study involving the creation of institutions has been undertaken by Van Dijk, Berends, Jelinek, Romme and Weggeman (2011) who explore the legitimization of radical innovations. This study provides an insightful definition into how actors deploy a number of activities to
achieve this objective. Actors who are embedded within the structure of the organization are identified as nonetheless being able to mobilise their efforts to radically innovate and effect change (ibid).
Institutional maintenance is defined as a ritualistic process and this is exemplified in the activity of formal dining at Cambridge University. The association of these rituals are also linked to the preservation of the British class system (Dacin, Munir and Tracey, 2010). This study highlights the importance of enacting rituals to
maintain institutions and it also draws attention to the fact that these processes have a strong effect on the individuals beyond the performing or enacting of rituals (ibid). Lok and De Rond (2013) conduct another study into institutional maintenance through an exploration of the rituals of the Oxford and Cambridge university boat race. This identifies micro activities that maintain institutionalised practice sand how maintaining institutions immunises an organization against their breakdown raising the question as to whether or not the same activities to maintain institutions exists in more ordinary institutions (ibid).
Currie, et al., (2012) explore how the institutional maintenance exerted by medical professionals enables them to sustain their dominance in a situation where the introduction of new nursing or medical roles threatened the power and status of specialised doctors. This study is also important in extending Lawrence and Suddaby’s (2006) preliminary taxonomy of institutional through its application within the arena of professional work. In particular, a number of types of
institutional work are observed as interacting identified different types of categories cross categories associated with creating or maintaining institutions (ibid). Different
types of institutional work are found to cross categories of creating and maintaining to preserve existing institutions. These practices ensure that the delivery of genetics services is delegated rather than substituted. This study reveals how ‘theorising’, ‘defining, educating,’ and ‘constructing normative networks’, originally linked to institutional creation are types of institutional work enacted for institutional maintenance (ibid).
Micelotta and Washington (2013) highlight the application of repair work in
maintaining institutions that in turn enables powerful actors to reverse change and re- establish the status quo. Lawrence et al., (2013) commend this study for defining institutions for their resilience and highlighting the importance of the process of maintenance as repair work.
Paroutis and Heracleous (2013) study explores interviews conducted with directors responsible for strategy to explore what the concept of strategy meant for strategists. The focus concentrates on the role of top tier executives who are responsible for devising corporate strategy applying the concept of institutional work through the use of a discourse focused approach in order to link both institutional theory and practice theory (ibid). The study importantly identifies how this provides an opportunity to build upon a very limited amount of research specifically applying discourse to the concept of institutional work (ibid). A key finding is that adoption of strategy is contingent on the way actors are able to utilise discourse through their accomplishment of institutional work (ibid). This calls for the more research to examine the application of discourse to processes that require the application of institutional work to other organizational contexts (ibid).