This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link AbstractTo understand how organizations combine conflicting institutional logics strategically to create and pursue new market opportunities, we conducted an in-depth longitudinal study of the multiple efforts of the Italian manufacturer of household goods Alessi to combine the logics of industrial manufacturing and cultural production. Over three decades, Alessi developed three different strategies to combine normative elements of the two logics, using each strategy to envision and pursue different market opportunities. By combining the logics of industrial manufacturing and cultural production, Alessi was able to envision new possibilities for value creation and to enact them through innovation in product design. The three strategies triggered a common set of mechanisms through which the purposeful combining of logics enabled the pursuit of opportunity, while each strategy structured the process differently. We develop a theoretical model linking the development of recombinant strategies to the dynamic restructuring of organizational agency and the related capacity to create and pursue new market opportunities. Our findings and theoretical insights advance understanding of the processes through which organizations challenge taken-forgranted beliefs and practices to create new market opportunities, use logics as resources to enable embedded agency, and design hybrid organizational arrangements.Keywords: institutional complexity, multiple institutional logics, hybrid organizations, opportunity creation, design innovation, cultural production. 3Research on institutional complexity has revealed the tensions that some organizations experience as they become exposed to conflicting prescriptions from different institutional logics, reflected in the expectations of multiple constituents (e.g., Binder, 2007;Purdy and Gray, 2009;Reay and Hinings, 2009) and/or understandings of organizational members (Glynn, 2000; Zilber, 2002). This research has related institutional complexity to intra-organizational conflicts (e.g., Glynn, 2000), internal resistance to change (e.g., Townley, 2002), and loss of audience support (D'Aunno, Sutton, and Price, 1991).Institutional logics are socially constructed, coherent, and integrated sets of "assumptions, values, beliefs and rules" (Thornton and Ocasio, 1999: 804) that give actors "organizing principles" prescribing legitimate ends and "the means by which those ends are achieved" (Friedland and Alford, 1991: 248). Researchers have increasingly shown that multiple logics coexist, and often compete, in governing a particular domain of activity (Thornton and Ocasio, 1999;Lounsbury, 2002Thornton, 2002;Marquis and Lounsbury, 2007;Smets et al., 2015), and scholarly attention has turned to the study of institutional complexity defined as the simultaneous operation of different logics that impose contradictory demands on an organization (Greenwoo...

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. A central insight that has emerged from this research is that: individuals' cultural repertoires enable them to conceive diverse strategies of actions to address different situations. Thus, although in a pathdependent and identity-constrained manner, culture provides individuals with a toolkit from which they can select resources to take strategic actions and effect change. This view of culture as a toolkit holds considerable promise for understanding strategic action and change at the organizational level of analysis. A different stream of organizational research has investigated the consequences of the use of cultural resources from outside an organization's industry register. This research emphasizes that the use of such resources is difficult, and potentially detrimental to organizations. Oakes, Townley, and Cooper (1998), for instance, document the tensions arising from the forced introduction of business concepts in the provincial museums and heritage sites of Alberta. Similarly, arts organizations that try to incorporate business concepts into their repertoire to become more commercially focused have been found to experience internal tensions (Fine 1992;Glynn 2000) due to the conflict between commercial considerations and the expressive function of arts (Eikhof and Haunschild 2007;Hirsch 1972). This research similarly suggests that organizations tend to use primarily cultural resources from their industry registers, and that doing otherwise is difficult and costly. Permanent repository link1 Concepts are culturally situated, extra-subjective frames for understanding social reality (Munir and Phillips 2005) that organize knowledge in a particular domain and provide relatively shared schemas guiding actions in a collectivity. 5As a result, whether and how organizations can expand their cultural repertoires with new cultural resources from outside their industry registers and the resulting consequences for their strategies remains poorly understood.To address these questions, we undertook a study of the evolution of the cultural repertoire of Alessi, RESEARCH METHOD Research SettingStrategic change at Alessi. Our study is an inductive inquiry (Glaser and Strauss 1967) carried out through an in-depth, longitudinal analysis of a revelatory case (Yin 1994) that provided an excellent research setting as it engaged in a clearly demarcated strategic change process. In the late 1960s, Alessi was the technological and market leader in the tableware segment of the Italian metal household industry, due to its advanced skills in cold-pressed steel production. In 1970, Alberto Alessi, the founder's grandson, joined the organization and, despite its positive economic performance, he steered it in a radically different directionusing industrial production methods to make art objects in steel. The first attempt in that direction failed, but 6 in the following years, Alessi developed innovative practices i...

One of the most significant challenges facing family firms is how to successfully manage succession from one generation of leaders to the next. In this paper, we contribute to existing understandings of this complex and difficult process by exploring how successors use family business succession narratives to legitimate their succession. Building on a case study of Alessi, a family-owned Italian design firm, we draw on the literature on organizational narratives to develop a framework for understanding family business succession narratives and present a typology of some of the narrative strategies that can be used during succession. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical ramifications of a narrative view of succession in family firms.

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Research Summary: Constructing narratives of transformative change is an important but challenging practice through which strategy-makers attempt to influence acceptance of an ongoing transformation. To understand whether and how strategy-makers can construct a steady influx of captivating narratives of transformative change, we analyzed how one noted strategy-maker assisted the successful transformation of his organization over three decades by orchestrating the production of change narratives. Our analysis reveals that the strategy-maker constructed and reconstructed meanings of change over time using three sets of distinct but interconnected narrative practices. We develop a dynamic model linking the simultaneous mobilization of these practices to strategymakers' ability to harness the persistent tension between novelty and familiarity in a transformative change, and thereby, win endorsement from key audiences. Managerial Summary: How can storytelling be used to influence acceptance of an ongoing organizational transformation? In this article, we try to answer this question by examining how, over three decades, Italian company Alessi documented its transformation from a manufacturer of kitchen steel utensils to a producer of a variety of household objects purchased also for their symbolic value. The leader behind Alessi's transformation, Alberto Alessi, orchestrated such storytelling effort, targeting employees, customers, retailers, and visitors to Alessi exhibitions. Our findings uncover how stories can be used to win audiences' endorsement of change through narrative practices aimed at: (a) constructing a collective memory of change, (b) depicting change as a novel but coherent departure from the past, and (c) portraying change as a transcendent endeavor.