Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple and Architecture for Liberal Religion in Chicago, 1885-1909

Siry, Joseph M.

doi:10.2307/3045793

Cited by 1 publication

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“…Wright had built houses for several parishioners at Unity Church, including Charles Roberts, head of the selection committee. Roberts, an engineer and inventor of industrial machinery, like Johonnot, was not only receptive to but encouraged Wright’s innovative spirit (Siry, 1991, 1998). Johnonot, Roberts, and Wright engaged in collective entrepreneurship to co-create a novel practice.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Novel Practice to Consecrated Exemplar: Unity Temple as a Case of Institutional Evangelizing

Jones

Massa

2013

Organization Studies

138

182

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Institutional theorists focus on practices that spread because they conform with and build on established cultural assumptions and resources. Novel practices, however, not only fail to conform to, but also challenge the dominant institutional order. We seek to understand the process by which novel practices move from entrepreneurial anomaly to consecrated exemplar within a field. We contrast Unity Temple by Frank Lloyd Wright—a building that challenged the accepted practices of ecclesiastical design in the architectural profession—with the most prominent churches during the same period. We find two distinct legitimation processes—institutional evangelism where creators express their identity and generate novel practices versus adaptive emulation where adopters focus on prestigious others and emulate their established practices. We reveal that actors engaged in institutional evangelism and adaptive emulation, employing institutional work and leveraging ideas, materials and identities to effect, transform, and maintain institutions. Our comparative cases show the key role of materiality, particularly collective identity markers, in institutional work and institutional processes.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%