Institutional theory's understanding of unplanned change in fragmented and complex environments has made the connection between institutional work at the micro level and institutional logics at the macro level a central issue. Change that is not planned is contingent on events. In practice an event, as a single occurrence of an unexpected, unanticipated or unacknowledged process, connects these levels, as the event is selected for attention, enacted in meaning, and organizationally coded. Not all events are selected, enacted and coded, of course. The recognition, attributes and potential of events depend on selections made from and meaning given to past events and those conceived as coming into being in the future perfect. The concept of recursive contingency describes how unique occurrences become connected in an evolving process over time; in doing so, it stresses the important role of the unexpected in regard to institutional change. Using a theoretical framework derived from Luhmann's work, in which institutions are seen as relatively autonomous self-closed subsystems generating contingency, we define an event as such by the fact that what it means and what is to be done with it cannot be decided by the application of a rule: choice is demanded that requires coding it as a specific type of event. A recursive view of contingency can be connected to an institutional theory of change in which the central role of institutional codes and networks of communication is stressed, producing a new theoretical approach to the explanation of institutional change. To illustrate the argument we make reference to one of the most significant counterfactual cases for questioning the solidity of institutions: the collapse of the key organization of the Soviet Union, the Communist Party.
The article analyses the dynamics of the interaction between events and business ethics within organizations. Events comprise those unpredictable things that happen. When they do, organizationally embedded managers will be responsible for making sense of these events. By being responsible, they are enacting ethics in the choices that they make for dealing with them. Events always raise ethical considerations because they are non-routine rather than a strict repetition of existing repertoires. Under certain circumstances, which we illustrate with a theory of the event, drawing on the work of Gilles Deleuze, we are able to investigate the de/institutionalizing of ethics theoretically. We draw on the new economic sociology to discuss the conditions of ethical and event de/institutionalization. Finally, we conceptualize the linkage between micro and macro dimensions framing the dynamics of business ethics in interaction with events.
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Résumé Cet article propose un cadre théorique précisant les situations où il existe une autonomie des choix éthiques managériaux. Ces choix éthiques sont des événements au sens deleuzien car ils sont contingents, non planifiables et identitaires. Des entretiens conduits avec des managers appartenant à l’industrie pharmaceutique et à une entreprise mondialement connue dans l’équipement sportif apportent une illustration à ce cadre théorique. Ces illustrations suggèrent de concevoir le processus de construction de l’éthique des affaires comme une série dynamique d’événements qui actualisent en permanence la pratique routinière de l’éthique, dans une interaction entre identité managériale et règle organisationnelle.
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