A Tale of Two Cities: Competing Logics and Practice Variation in the Professionalizing of Mutual Funds

Abstract

This article examines practice diffusion in an environment where competing logics exist, specifically investigating how trustee and performance logics that were rooted in different locations (Boston and New York) led to variation in how mutual funds established contracts with independent professional money management firms. This focus on competing logics redirects institutional research away from isomorphism and the segregation of institutional and technical forces and toward an appreciation of how multiple forms of rationality underlie change in organizational fields. Implications for the dominant two-stage institutional model of diffusion and for research on institutions, organizations, and professions are discussed.

The Role of Analogy in the Institutionalization of Sustainability Reporting

“…When multiple competing logics are present, the temporal shift from technical to symbolic rationality might not play out as canonically prescribed (Lounsbury 2007). As the GRI case exemplifies, innovations may be adopted symbolically early in the cycle, and then pursued substantively, at least by some adopters, in later stages (Feldman and March, 1981).…”

“…Greenwood et al 2002), but is even more difficult in emerging institutional fields where field boundaries, membership and structure are still in flux (Aldrich and Fiol 1994;Maguire et al 2004). Even in emerging fields, though, institutionalization does not operate in a vacuum; the institutional landscape is filled with institutional "parts" that institutional entrepreneurs can recombine to develop novel institutions (Lounsbury, 2007;Schneiberg, 2007;Stark, 1996). Social actors with conflicting interests all draw upon these features in the institutional landscape to further their agendas.…”

“…Social actors with conflicting interests all draw upon these features in the institutional landscape to further their agendas. While the paradigmatic view of institutionalization asserts that novel practices diffuse first among users who "technically" need to adopt them and then later diffuse through contagion, once they have become "institutionalized" (Baron, Dobbin and Jennings 1986;Tolbert and Zucker 1983), this view has been criticized both theoretically and empirically, and a more compelling theoretical approach built on the understanding that many institutional entrepreneurs operate in environments subject to multiple, competing institutional logics (Friedland and Alford, 1991), conflicting rationalities (Townley 2002), and practice variation (Lounsbury 2001(Lounsbury , 2007.In these settings, language and discourse are key components in the institutional entrepreneur's arsenal to guide the institutionalization process. At the most basic level entrepreneurs must produce texts that are accessible, understandable and persuasive (Green 2004;Phillips et al 2004;Suddaby and Greenwood 2005).…”

Reflexões ao Campo de Processo Decisório a Partir da Abordagem de Lógicas Institucionais

“…O pressuposto de agência imersa é respeitado na medida em que não se admite a mudança, seja ela organizacional ou institucional, como resultado da ação propositada ou de escolhas conscientemente estratégicas, mas de outras questões mais complexas. Lounsbury (2007), por exemplo, argumenta que a fundação para o conflito e mudança contínua provém dos múltiplos tipos de sistemas de crenças historicamente enraizadas.…”

A Multivocal and Multilevel Institutionalist Perspective to Analyze Information Technology-Enabled Change in the Public Service in Africa

“…This is based on the argument that a way to analyze how IT-enabled public sector reforms have effectively impacted organizational structures is to focus on changes of practices of IT users (Orlikowski 1992;Orlikowski and Robey 1991). As the latter are embedded into multivocal institutional contexts, it is assumed that users try to realign the institutional order by legitimating new meanings and practices (Johnson et al 2000;Lounsbury 2007). In their choices, they are driven by different institutional forces underpinning different types of legitimacies.…”