Organizational Responses to Proto-Institutions: How the Semi-edited and Unedited Accounts Clash

Abstract

While adoption of institutionalized structures has received immense attention from organizational scholars, the processes associated with adoption of proto-institutions are infrequently studied. Drawing on an ethnographic longitudinal study of Producer Choice adoption by a public broadcasting organization, I contribute to the extant literature by offering three findings. First, I show how the semi-edited account of an initial implementation of proto-institution clashes with multiple unedited accounts of subsequent adoptions and results in increased ambiguity regarding the structure. Second, I shed light on how actors involved in the focal adoption struggled to follow incompatible accounts and gauge the proto-institution’s value. Last, I show how actors produce their own adoption by borrowing the justification for reform from the semi-edited account but founding its design on a previous adoption that was perceived as failed.

The institutional consequences of decoupling exposure

“…For instance, the Japanese permanent employment institution had to yield to economic pressures (Ahmadjian and Robinson, 2001) and the established institutions regulating Norwegian fisheries were changed by government intervention (Holm, 1995). At the other end of the spectrum, it can easily be noticed that some proto-institutions (Hensel, 2018; Lawrence et al, 2002; Zietsma and McKnight, 2009) do become institutionalized. Such developments can be explained by pointing to numerous causes such as external shocks (Meyer, 1982), agency of institutional entrepreneurs (DiMaggio, 1988), practice-driven change (Smets et al, 2012), and competition of institutional logics (Dunn and Jones, 2010; Thornton et al, 2012).…”

Narrating Institutional Logics into Effect: Coherence Across Cognitive, Political, and Emotional Elements

“…They are usually emotionally and symbolically charged, and whether they will develop into a full story has much to do with power relations and issues of legitimacy and credibility (Gabriel, 2016). Protostories may relate to proto-institutions (Lawrence, Hardy, and Phillips, 2002) and serve as accounts that determine proto-institutions' development into institutions (Hensel, 2018).…”

Logic Plasticity and Bounded Custodial Work in Inter-Institutional Projects

“…Since inter-institutional projects often follow the same formula when they involve the same actors within wider lines of projects or portfolios of projects, this definition opens the possibility to approach inter-institutional projects as permanent or recurring proto-institutions. Hensel (2018) suggested that actors can adopt protoinstitutions to imitate highly legitimate actors in their field in an effort to increase their own legitimacy. For example, this can include new fashionable practices not yet institutionalized but that might carry existing institutional logics with a higher potential of institutional plasticity.…”