Social Skill and Institutional Theory

Fligstein, Neil

doi:10.1177/0002764297040004003

Cited by 911 publications

(713 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Settlements were achieved only through what has been termed elsewhere "skilled action" (Fligstein 1997). Where actors were skillful in performing temporal work, able to mobilize collective action, and capable of convincing others about a particular articulation of temporal interpretations, they could enable forward movement.…”

Section: Temporal Work In Strategy Makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal Work in Strategy Making

Kaplan

Orlikowski

2013

Organization Science

419

458

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This paper reports on a field study of strategy making in one organization facing an industry crisis. In a comparison of five strategy projects, we observed that organizational participants struggled with competing interpretations of what might emerge in the future, what was currently at stake, and even what had happened in the past. We develop a model of temporal work in strategy making that articulates how actors resolved differences and linked their interpretations of the past, present, and future so as to construct a strategic account that enabled concrete strategic choice and action. We found that settling on a particular account required it to be coherent, plausible and acceptable, otherwise breakdowns resulted. Such breakdowns could impede progress, but could also be generative in provoking a search for new interpretations and possibilities for action. The more intensely actors engaged in temporal work, the more likely the strategies departed from the status quo. Our model suggests that strategy cannot be understood as the product of more or less accurate forecasting without considering the multiple interpretations of present concerns and historical trajectories that help to constitute those forecasts. Projections of the future are always entangled with views of the past and present, and temporal work is the means by which actors construct and reconstruct the connections among them. These insights into the mechanisms of strategy making help explain the practices and conditions that produce organizational inertia and change. Temporal Work in Strategy Making-1 -A fundamental challenge for managers making strategy is coping with an uncertain future. In studying strategic change, scholars have emphasized the importance of sensemaking as a collective and often conflictual interpretive process for dealing with uncertainties about the business, the market, and the environment that lead to breakdowns in understandings and require cognitive reorientations to move forward (Balogun and Johnson 2004;Gioia and Chittipeddi 1991;Gioia et al. 1994;Kaplan 2008b;Maitlis and Sonenshein 2010;Rouleau 2005). These studies suggest that linking across interpretations of the past, present and future make action possible, but have left unexplained how and why some linkages work and some fail in practice, and, for those that do work, why some lead to the status quo and others produce change.Our study of strategy making in practice offers some answers to these questions. We found that managers -through a set of practices that we call "temporal work" -come to settle on particular strategic accounts that link interpretations of the past, present and future in ways that appear coherent, plausible and Settling on a strategic account, even if provisional, allows actors to shift from disagreeing or deliberating about meanings to implementing strategic choices, thus enabling the organization to move forward in the face of uncertainty. If a settlement breaks down, further temporal work is required in order to reconstruct a new str...

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Section: Temporal Work In Strategy Makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal Work in Strategy Making

Kaplan

Orlikowski

2013

Organization Science

419

458

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The less powerful sometimes acquiesce to traditional practices that disadvantage them because they are concerned about sanction (e.g., DiMaggio andPowell 1983, Scott 2007) or because they do not have the skills required to fight effectively for their rights (e.g., Fligstein 1997). Cultural tools such as a repertoire of contentious tactics can enable them to challenge defenders individually and covertly (Meyerson 2003, Meyerson and Scully 1995, Morrill et al 2003 or collectively and overtly (e.g., Briscoe and Safford 2008, Katzenstein 1998, Lounsbury 2001, Raeburn 2004, Scully et al 1998, Scully and Segal 2002 A repertoire of contentious tactics is simply a collection of practices, often created by a social movement, that the less powerful inside organizations can draw from to challenge the status quo and its defenders.…”

Section: Current Literature On Practice Challenge and Change By Less mentioning

confidence: 99%

Hot Lights and Cold Steel: Cultural and Political Toolkits for Practice Change in Surgery

Kellogg¹

2011

Organization Science

116

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One of the great paradoxes of organizational culture is that even when less powerful members in organizations have access to cultural tools (such as frames, identities, and tactics) that support change, they often do not use these tools to challenge traditional practices that disadvantage them. In this study, I compare data about work practice change from my own field study of an elite teaching hospital (conducted in the early 2000s) to previously reported data from field studies of two similar hospitals (one conducted in the 1970s and one in the 1990s). I demonstrate that although cultural toolkits supporting change may allow less powerful organization members to see traditional practices as running counter to their interests, they may not be able to significantly change traditional practices unless they also have access to what I call political toolkits (including tools such as staffing systems, accountability systems, and evaluation systems) that support change. Although cultural tools allow them to reinterpret practices that disadvantage them as unfair, political tools allow them to feel optimistic that others will help them effect change. Whereas cultural tools enable them to develop a “we” feeling with other reformers, political tools allow them to coordinate their change efforts. And although cultural tools provide them with a repertoire of contentious tactics, political tools afford them a sense of security that they can battle defenders of the status quo without ruining their careers. These findings contribute to our understanding of both the cultural construction of organizational life and social movement processes.

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“…Agentic qualities are ascribed only to the "exceptional" individuals and organizations, namely, institutional entrepreneurs (Beckert 1999;DiMaggio 1988DiMaggio ,1991Fligstein 1997;Garud, Hardy & Maguire 2007;Greenwood & Suddaby 2006), renegades (Kondra & Hinings 1998 and outsiders (Greenwood, Suddaby & Hinings 2002;Kraatz & Moore 2002). These assumptions have led researchers to overlook the role of the majority of organizational members, who are arguably vital to institutional transmission because without their involvement, any institutional innovation would remain at the level of a plan, aspiration or ideal.…”

Section: Agency and Institutional Transmissionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dialogue and distributed agency in institutional transmission

Whittle

Suhomlinova

Mueller

2011

Journal of Management & Organization

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In this paper we contribute to the body of work on agency and institutional transmission by proposing two new concepts: distributed agency and dialogue. "Distributed agency" is a companion concept to "institutional entrepreneurship". Whilst institutional entrepreneurship emphasizes the deliberate institution-building by a select few, distributed agency highlights the emergent institution-building that involves all organizational members. In turn, "dialogue" supplements the models of institutional diffusion by drawing attention to the situated interactions between the "champions" and the "recipients" of institutional innovations. We analyze the micro-discursive processes during a crucial event in the institutionalization of a new organizational template in a UK public-private partnership. We found that institutional transmission hinged upon enabling the recipients to act as agents (hence, distributed agency) through dialogue around the audience"s identity, interests and local concerns vis-à-vis coercive institutional pressures. promote an institutional innovation requires an institutional entrepreneur, but to embed it in and turn it into a taken-for-granted element of organizational reality, we suggest, calls for the participation of all actors expected to enact the innovation. To capture this collective property of institutionalization, we offer the term "distributed agency". Secondly, we contribute to the understanding of institutional transmission by highlighting the role of "interpreters" in modifying the innovation in dialogue with its recipients. Constructing "buy in" on the part of recipients, we suggest, requires engaging in a dialogue that re-constructs the innovation as congruent with the audience"s interests, identity and local conditions. To reflect this relational/interactive property of institutionalization, we employ the notion of "dialogue". KEY WORDSIn our theorizing we build on the literatures on institutional work, distributed organizational phenomena (e.g., distributed cognition, distributed leadership) and dialogical organizational processes (e.g., dialogical learning).

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Social Skill and Institutional Theory

Cited by 911 publications

References 8 publications

Temporal Work in Strategy Making

Temporal Work in Strategy Making

Hot Lights and Cold Steel: Cultural and Political Toolkits for Practice Change in Surgery

Dialogue and distributed agency in institutional transmission

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