Through a comparative historical study of community pharmacy in the UK, Italy, Sweden and the USA, we examine what happens to institutional arrangements designed to resolve ongoing conflicts between institutional logics over extended periods of time. We find that institutional arrangements can reflect the heterogeneity of multiple logics without resulting in hybridization or dominance. Because logics remain active, similar conflicts can reappear multiple times. We find that the durability of the configurations of competing logics reflects the characteristics of the polities in which fields are embedded. The dominance of any societal institutional order leads to more stable field level arrangements. We suggest that the metaphor of institutional knots and the related image of institutional knotting are useful to capture aspects of this dynamic and to foreground the discursive and material work which allows multiple logics to co-exist in local arrangements with variable durability.

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Wage formation in Sweden has been decentralized, and the introduction of individual performance-based pay has increased employer discretion. This article explores practices of local-level wage determination and argues that existing analyses still have too much focus on the formal (regulatory) institutions toexplain what that is going on under the surface. Drawing on interviews with HR, managers, employees and union representatives from both public and private sector organizations, the study concludes that individual and differentiated wagesetting is delimited locally by small budgets and the actors' cultural-cognitive and normative expectations. Even though there have been radical changes in collective agreements and policies, we find strong elements of path dependency in local wage determination practices.

This study contributes to the evidence on motivational effects from performance-related pay (PRP) in the public sector. The theoretical point of departure is that the practical organization and administration locally affect the motivational effects of PRP. The analysis is based on surveys administered to employees (including managers) in Swedish public sector organizations at municipal, regional, and state levels. One of the main conclusions is that PRP is not motivating or demotivating per se, but can be both motivating and demotivating within in the same organization. The (de/)motivational effect depends on the local level organization and practices of PRP, particularly the quality of the performance appraisal dialogue. While confirming the importance of justice perceptions, it also shows the effects of managers’ and employees’ preparations, knowledge of criteria, the quality of the performance appraisal dialogue, and the manager’s evaluation style, while controlling for justice perceptions and background variables.