International audienceA challenge facing cultural-frame institutionalism is to explain how existing institutional logics and role identities are replaced by new logics and role identities. This article depicts identity movements that strive to expand individual autonomy as motors of institutional change. It proposes that the sociopolitical legitimacy of activists, extent of theorization of new roles, prior defections by peers to the new logic, and gains to prior defectors act as identity-discrepant cues that induce actors to abandon traditional logics and role identities for new logics and role identities. A study of how the nouvelle cuisine movement in France led elite chefs to abandon classical cuisine during the period starting from 1970 and ending in 1997 provides wide-ranging support for these arguments. Implications for research on institutional change, social movements, and social identity are outline

International audienceSociological researchers have studied the consequences of strong categorical boundaries, but have devoted little attention to the causes and consequences of boundary erosion. This study analyzes the erosion of categorical boundaries in the case of opposing category pairs. The authors propose that categorical boundaries weaken when the borrowing of elements from a rival category by high-status actors triggers emulation such that the mean number of elements borrowed by others increases and the variance in the number of elements borrowed declines. It is suggested that penalties to borrowing in the form of downgraded evaluations by critics exist, but decline as the number of peers who borrow increases. The research setting is French gastronomy during the period from 1970 to 1997, when classical and nouvelle cuisines were rival categories competing for the allegiance of chefs. The results broadly support the authors' hypotheses, indicating that chefs redrew the boundaries of culinary categories, which critics eventually recognized. Implications for research on blending and segregating processes are outlined

This paper challenges the predominant view that legitimation is merely a specific phase in merger or acquisition processes. We argue that a better understanding of postmerger organizational dynamics calls for conceptualization of discursive legitimation as an inherent part of unfolding merger processes. In particular, we focus on the recursive relationship between legitimation and organizational action. We have two objectives: to outline a theoretical model that helps one to understand the dynamics of discursive legitimation and organizational action in postmerger organizations, and to examine a revealing case to distinguish the inherent risks and problems in discursive legitimation. Our case analysis focuses on the merger between the French pharmaceutical companies BioMérieux and Pierre Fabre. We adopt a critical multimethod approach and distinguish specific discursive dynamics and pathological tendencies in this case. The analysis highlights the unintended consequences of discursive legitimation, the central role of sensegiving and sensehiding in discursive legitimation, the inherently political nature of legitimation and the risks associated with politicization, the special problems associated with fashionable discourses and the role of the media, the use of specific discursive strategies for legitimation and delegitimation, and the crucial role of actual integration results. This analysis adds to the existing research on mergers and acquisitions by treating discursive legitimation as part of the merger dynamics. In particular, our case analysis provides a new explanation for merger failure. We also believe that the recursive model connecting discursive legitimation and delegitimation strategies to concrete organizational action makes a more general contribution to our understanding of organizational legitimation.

The objective of this article is to elucidate how justice in general and distributive justice in particular are given sense to and made sense of in postmerger integration. Drawing on a longitudinal real-time analysis of a recent merger, we identify a pattern in which focus moved from equality to eqnity to less emphasis on distributive justice. To understand tbe dynamics involved, we develop a process model that explains bow actors reconcile pressures of value creation and sociopolitical concerns in dialogical "sensegiving" and "sensemaking" processes tbat lead to tbe enactment of specific norms of justice. Tbis analysis adds to researcb on mergers and acquisitions by facilitating understanding of the crucial role tbat norms of justice play in postmerger integration, of tbe way in wbich tbey cbange over time as integration processes unfold, and of tbe intergroup dynamics throngb wbicb tbese norms of justice are enacted. By uncovering the microdynamics of dialogical sensegiving and sensemaking processes, we also contribute to research on organizational justice, sensemaking, and process studies. Organizational justice plays a central role in mergers and acquisitions (M&As). This is especially the case with postmerger integration, which involves changes that are often difficult to understand or accept in their own right (Clark, Gioia,

International audienceWe study the effects of organizational code-preserving and code-violating changes on external evaluations by third parties - an essential but under-studied strategic outcome. We define code-preserving changes as a variation in the firm's product range that preserves the social code within which the firm positions its offering. By contrast, a code-violating change corresponds to a variation in the product range that breaks with past codes and embraces another social code. Our analyses of French haute cuisine restaurants show that code-preserving changes and code-violating changes have positive effects on external evaluations. Both effects decline with prior evaluations received by the organization, but only the effect of code-violating changes is reduced with age. Moreover, external evaluations improve when restaurants undertake more code-preserving changes than their direct competitors but decline when they make more code-violating changes than competitors. These results enable us to derive implications for research on strategic change, strategic groups, and strategic social positionin

Although employees' willingness to cooperate is acknowledged as a critical success factor for post-M&A (merger-and-acquisition) integration, we still know little about the psychological mechanisms that lie beneath employees' cooperative attitudes and behaviors in this context. Building on the premises of fairness heuristic theory, this longitudinal study explores how the relative importance of distributive and procedural justice judgments for employees' willingness to cooperate shifts over time. We suggest that when employees lack justice-relevant information on both distributive and procedural aspects of decisions, they will use another temporary heuristic to reduce uncertainty by scrutinizing the M&A-related cooperative behaviors of authority fi gures. We test our hypotheses on data from a four-time repeated cross-sectional survey of employee responses in a post-M&A integration process. The fi ndings provide important insights into how merging fi rms can enhance employees' willingness to cooperate through the subtle exercise of justice and exemplarity.

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