Institutional Change in Toque Ville: Nouvelle Cuisine as an Identity Movement in French Gastronomy

Abstract

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

Operating Room: Relational Spaces and Microinstitutional Change in Surgery

“…Organizations are also more likely to embrace new policies if they are nonprofit organizations or public agencies that are highly visible because of their large size or if they are more receptive to innovations in employment practices because they have separate personnel offices (Baron, Dobbin, and Jennings 1986;Dobbin et al 1988;Edelman 1990Edelman , 1992. When institutional pressures run counter to the interests of top managers, they may engage in merely symbolic versus real change according to their power vis-à -vis external audiences (Westphal and Zajac 1994) and according to whether the change that is called for is consistent with their backgrounds (Fligstein 1985), their professional identities (Binder 2002;Rao, Monin, and Durand 2003), or the behavior of high-status actors in their organizational field (Rao, Monin, and Durand 2005).…”

“…Institutional theorists have shown that organizational response to institutional pressure is associated with particular environmental characteristics such as dominant beliefs, norms, and resources (e.g., Edelman 1990; Ruef and Scott 1998;Scott et al 2000), regulatory regimes (Tolbert and Zucker 1983;Baron et al 1986;Katzenstein 1998) and communityspecific requirements (Lounsbury 2007;Marquis, Glynn, and Davis 2007), particular organizational characteristics such as alignment with the public sector (Dobbin et al 1988;Edelman 1992), existence of a personnel office (Baron et al 1986;Edelman 1992), and organizational performance (Westphal and Zajac 1994), and particular top-manager characteristics such as work background (Fligstein 1990) and professional identity (Binder 2002;Rao et al 2003). Since Advent and Bayshore were matched on each of these environmental, organizational, and top-manager characteristics, these characteristics alone may not be sufficient for explaining change in an institutionalized work practice.…”

Creative Leadership: A Multi-Context Conceptualization

“…Haute cuisine is a highly institutionalized field (Ferguson, 1998) that involves various actors (e.g., chefs, critics, restaurateurs), among whom chefs are the dominant players (Rao, Monin, & Durand, 2003). This gives them the power to make more creative contributions than anyone else.…”

The Art of Creating Culinary Innovations

“…Ganter, 2004 ). The power of such creative freedom can be manifested, for example, in the social movement in that a number of elite chefs revolted against the institution of gastronomy and so created the grounds on which the Nouvelle Cuisine was able to emerge ( Rao et al ., 2003 ). At this time, these elite chefs started to abandon a centuries-old symbolic language (cf.…”