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This essay encourages scholars of management and organization studies (MOS) to critically reflect on how Indigenous peoples and their knowledges have been, and continue to be, systemically discriminated against. This discrimination is the result of colonization; it has deeply impacted and continues to affect which knowledges and practices are valued and embraced. The impact of colonization is mirrored in MOS via processes and actions within the academic setting and our business schools. The result is the continued marginalization of Indigenous peoples and their knowledges. We propose a shift in how MOS scholars approach research in relation to non-western societies to counter, and hopefully end, these continued practices of discrimination in our business schools. Specifically, we argue that demarginalizing Indigenous research in academia and going beyond ‘cosmetic indigenization’ in our business schools are new, collaborative ways of rethinking indigeneity and breaking down the current barriers in MOS that reinforce and perpetuate the systemic discrimination against Indigenous peoples, their knowledges and practices.

Organizational identity scholarship has largely focused on the mutability of meanings ascribed to ambiguous identity labels. In contrast, we analyze a case study of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) to explore how leaders maintained a meaning ascribed to an ambiguous identity label amid successive identity threats. We found that heightened dissensus surrounding meanings attributed to the organization’s “reform group” label at three key points spurred theoretically similar manifestations of two processes. The first, meaning sedimentation, involved leaders invoking history to advocate for the importance of their preferred meaning while mulling the inclusion of others. The second, reconstructing the past, occurred as leaders and members alike offered narratives that obscured the history of disavowed meanings while sharing new memories of those they prioritized. Our work complements research on identity change by drawing attention to the processes by which meaning(s) underlying ambiguous identity labels might survive.

This study examines how managers and entrepreneurs in stigmatized industries use historical narratives to combat stigma. We examine two industries, the private military contractors (PMC) industry in the United States and the cannabis industry in Canada. In recent decades, the representatives of these industries have worked to reduce the level of stigmatization faced by the industries. We show that historical narratives were used rhetorically by the representatives of both industries. In both cases, these historical narratives were targeted at just one subset of the population. Our research contributes to debates about stigmatization in ideologically diverse societies, an important issue that have been overlooked by the existing literature on stigmatized industries, which tends to assume the existence of homogeneous audiences when researching the efforts of industry representatives to destigmatize their industries.

Organizations commonly regard memories of pain and destruction as being unwanted. In this article, we consider the largely undertheorized potential that painful pasts can have for building a mnemonic community. We draw primarily on oral history interviews to explore how Martin Litton and Grand Canyon Dories use sensory, discursive, and material-discursive modalities to convert painful memories into mnemonic resources through the performance of three practices: sensitizing, retelling, and reincarnating. Their aim was to protect the Grand Canyon for future generations. We advance research on organizational uses of the past by theorizing how painful memories can be converted into mnemonic resources. Specifically, we underscore the untapped potential of organizations repackaging history-at-large to curate experiences of the past using combinations of semiotic modalities and remembering practices. We call this multimodal remembering. We also contribute to research on place by illustrating how destroyed natural wonders that no longer exist in their geological corporeal form can be transposed across time and space and become re-embodied in new phantasmatic forms.

This paper provides an overview and discussion of the rapidly growing literature on organizational memory studies (OMS). We define OMS as an inquiry into the ways that remembering and forgetting shape, and are shaped by, organizations and organizing processes. The contribution of this article is threefold. We briefly review what we understand by organizational memory and explore some key debates and points of contestation in the field. Second, we identify four different perspectives that have been developed in OMS (functional, interpretive, critical and performative) and expand upon each perspective by showcasing articles published over the past decade. In particular, we examine four papers previously published in Organization Studies to show the distinctiveness of each perspective. Finally, we identify a number of areas for future research to facilitate the future development of OMS.

In this article, we advocate for a more balanced approach to the study of the past in management and organization studies. We define organizational mnemonics as a broader field of inquiry focused on theorizing the past as an integral part of organizational life, including three major epistemic communities—that is, functionalist, interpretive, and critical. We contend that much of organizational mnemonics research has been dominated by functionalism, at the expense of other approaches. To remediate this situation, we first characterize organizational mnemonics’ core epistemic communities. Second, we look at the boundary work at the interstices of these communities to explore possibilities of dialogue among them. We argue that the future of the study of the past in organizations should acknowledge different perspectives, the intersections among them, and make a conscientious effort to maintain diversity of scholarship in the field.

Society increasingly demands corporations to be accountable for their past misbehaviours. Some corporations engage in forgetting work with the aim of avoiding responsibility for their wrongdoings. We argue that whenever social actors have their past actions called into question and engage in forgetting work, an ethics of remembering takes place. A collective project of social forgetting is contingent on the emergence of coordinated actions among players of an industry. Similarly, sustained efforts of forgetting work depend on the continuity of the project through various generations of employees, which presumes the existence of frameworks of remembering in place. We analysed this paradox through a historical case study of the U.S. tobacco industry. We conclude that forgetting work may be a double-edged sword. It might be beneficial in the short run, to the extent that corporations can successfully maintain the public ignorance about their deceitful pasts. In the long run, however, it creates additional layers of historical irresponsibility and may turn into a compounded liability in the event the memory of the collective strategy of social forgetting becomes public.

Research Summary The capacity to manage history is an important but undertheorized component of dynamic capabilities. We argue that the capacity to manage the interpretation of the past, in the present for the future, is a critical ability that informs a firm's ability to successfully enact changes needed to adapt to disruptive technology. We identify and elaborate three specific cognitive interpretations of history—history as objective fact, history as interpretive rhetoric, and history as imaginative future‐perfect thinking—and demonstrate how these different views of history can be mobilized by managers to sense, seize, and reconfigure around opportunities made available by understanding the invisible thread of technology. Managerial Summary History is typically understood to be a constraint on a manager's ability to effect change. A firm's past is assumed to create inertia in routines and structures that compromise a firm's ability to change. We show how acquiring a broader understanding of the role of history can improve a manager's ability to enact organizational change. Studying the evolution of technology over time and across products allows managers to sense opportunities created by technological change. Using different narrations of the past as continuous or disruptive can improve a manager's ability to motivate or resist change. Using the past to construct convincing scenarios of the future, managers can enroll key stakeholders in the industry to support a strategic direction that advances the firm's strategic goals.

Our goals in writing this editorial are threefold. First, we contextualize the growing interest in matters of history, memory, and the past by management and organization scholars. Despite the increasing number of works in historical organization studies, functionalism and functional-interpretivism remain dominant approaches in management and organizational studies (MOS). Moreover, because European and North American scholars are overrepresented there has been limited analysis of the historical impact of global trade and multinational organizations in the relations between the global North and global South. Second, we map the literature connecting history, memory, and the past to organizations and organizing. We provide an overview of the initial efforts of MOS scholars to develop humanist approaches to organization studies and we discuss the role that history plays in illuminating epistemological, theoretical, methodological, and empirical conversations in the field. Third, we highlight the specific contribution of the articles in this special issue to the overall literature on historical organization studies.

Time pressures organizations for adaptation and survival. When new social trends and internal generational dynamics disrupt organizational sources of competitive advantage, organizations might enga...

Dynamic capabilities (DCs) are the processes that organizations develop to remain competitive over time. However, in spite of the importance of temporality in the development of DCs, the roles of time, history, and memory remain largely implicit. In fact, most studies focus on the past as a source of constraints and limits for managerial action. Alternatively, we advocate for a social constructionist view of the past. Our core argument is that the capacity to manage the past is a critical competence of modern organizations. We argue that organizations can manage their collective memory as resources that aid the objective reproduction and exploitation of existing routines, the interpretive reconstruction and recombination of past capabilities for adaptation to environmental change, and the imaginative extension and exploration of collective memory for anticipated scenarios and outcomes. This renewed view of time, history, and memory is better suited for a dynamic theory of competitive advantage. RESUMO Capacidades dinâmicas (CDs) são os processos que as organizações desenvolvem para se manter competitivas ao longo do tempo. Entretanto, apesar da importância da temporalidade no desenvolvimento das CDs, os papéis do tempo, da história e da memória permanecem, em grande medida, implícitos. Na verdade, a maioria dos estudos concentram-se no passado como fonte de restrições e limites à ação gerencial. Alternativamente, defendemos uma visão construtivista social do passado. Nosso argumento central é que a capacidade de gerenciar o passado é uma competência crítica das organizações modernas. Argumentamos que as organizações podem gerenciar sua memória coletiva como recursos que auxiliam a reprodução e exploração objetivas de rotinas existentes, a reconstrução e recombinação interpretativas de capacidades passadas para adaptação a mudanças ambientais, e a extensão e exploração imaginativas da memória coletiva, para cenários e resultados antecipados. Esta visão renovada de tempo, história e memória é melhor adequada a uma teoria dinâmica da vantagem competitiva. RESUMEN Las capacidades dinámicas (CD) son el proceso que las organizaciones desarrollan para mantenerse competitivas con el paso del tiempo. Sin embargo, a pesar de la importancia de la temporalidad en el desarrollo de las CD, los papeles del tiempo, la historia y la memoria continúan siendo ampliamente implícitos. En realidad, la mayoría de los estudios se concentra en el pasado como fuente de restricciones y límites para la acción gerencial. Alternativamente, abogamos por una visión constructivista social del pasado. Nuestro argumento central es que la capacidad de administrar el pasado es una competencia crítica de las organizaciones modernas. Sostenemos que las organizaciones pueden administrar su memoria colectiva como recursos que ayudan a la reproducción y explotación objetiva de las rutinas existentes, a reconstrucción y recombinación interpretativa de capacidades pasadas de adaptación al cambio ambiental y a la extensión y exploración imaginativas de la memoria colectiva para escenarios y resultados anticipados. Esta visión renovada del tiempo, la historia y la memoria más adecuada para una teoría dinámica de ventaja competitiva.

History has long been recognised as a strategic and organisational resource. However, until recently, the advantage conferred by history was attributed to a firm’s ability to accumulate heterogeneous resources or develop opaque practices. In contrast, we argue that the advantage history confers on organisations is based on understanding when the knowledge of the past is referenced and the reasons why it is strategically communicated. We argue that managers package this knowledge in historical narratives to address particular organisational concerns and audiences. As well, we show that different historical narratives are produced with the goal of achieving different organisational outcomes. The success of an organisation is thus dependent on the ability of its managers to skilfully develop historical narratives that create a strategic advantage.

Prior research in entrepreneurship suggests a relationship between the experience and personal history of the entrepreneur and the identification of opportunities. However, the task of an entrepren...

O presente ensaio busca apresentar um conjunto de recomendações teórico-metodológicas com o objetivo de orientar a realização de pesquisas sobre estratégia. Inicia-se a partir de uma discussão sobre a evolução dos estudos sobre estratégia organizacional na literatura, enfatizando seus principais pressupostos e características comuns e diferenciadoras, e culmina na apresentação da perspectiva da estratégia-como-prática. Apesar das contribuições aportadas por esta última abordagem em relação às suas precedentes, afirma-se que ela tenha se desvencilhado demais da dimensão organizacional, elemento próprio da definição do fenômeno da estratégia, sendo necessário rediscutir a relação do organizing e strategizing. Seguindo a tendência da literatura, em que as possibilidades apontam para maior aproximação entre o pensamento teórico da estratégia e as teorias das organizações, sugere-se que a abordagem do institucionalismo organizacional pode contribuir para expandir a perspectiva da estratégia-como-prática e mediar sua relação com a abordagem estruturacionista, considerando sua aplicabilidade para a compreensão da estratégia como prática organizacional. Considera-se, no entanto, que os estudos institucionais sobre estratégia tendem a manter as visões dualistas das perspectivas tradicionais da área, demandando reorientação das pesquisas institucionais a partir dos pressupostos da teoria da estruturação com vistas à ampliação da capacidade analítica da abordagem. A partir dessa discussão inicial, considera-se a necessidade de compreender a estratégia a fortiori, aceitar sua constituição como conjunto de práticas espaçotemporalmente definido e delimitado, que adquire determinada configuração e apresenta-se aos pesquisadores e praticantes de maneira distinta, tendo em vista que se desdobra e se desenvolve como fluxo de ações contínuas e descontínuas re(produzidas) a partir de, e com base em, determinadas estruturas sociais e organizacionais. Após essa reformulação, indica-se a improdutividade de desconectar estratégia e organização, assim como a necessidade de compreender estratégia como prática organizacional que existe tanto como fluxo rotineiro de ações individuais - inseridas na durée de práticas cotidianas, integradas social e sistemicamente - quanto como regras e recursos mnemonicamente preservados e que promove a geração de efeitos que se distanciam espaçotemporalmente e que podem ser observados pelo analista em seus fatores precedentes, na dinâmica atual de realização e em suas consequências e implicações futuras, uma vez definido o marco analítico empírico. This paper seeks to present a set of theoretical and methodological recommendations in order to guide the research on strategy. It starts from a discussion of the evolution of studies in organizational strategy, emphasizing its main assumptions as well as its common and differentiating features. It also presents the perspective of strategic-as-practice. Although the contributions of the strategic-as-practice approach, it has dismissed the organizational dimension, which should be at the center of the strategy concept. Because of this, we think it is necessary to revisit the relationship between organizing and strategizing. We follow the literature in suggesting a closer link between the studies of strategy and the theories of organization. We suggest that the approach of organizational institutionalism can contribute to expand the perspective of the strategy-as-practice and mediate its relationship with the structurationist approach, considering its applicability to the understanding of strategy as an organizational practice. However, we consider that institutional studies on strategy tended to keep the traditional dualistic views of the traditional approaches, requiring a reorientation based on the assumptions of the theory of structuration. Considering this initial discussion, the paper states the need to understand strategy a fortiori, what means to accept its constitution as a space and time limited set of practices that is configured and presented to researchers and practitioners in different ways as it unfolds and develop over time as a flow of actions discontinuously and discontinuously re-(produced) from, and based on, certain social and organizational structures. From this reformulation, we indicate that it is not productive to disconnect the concepts of strategy and organization and that researchers should understand the practice of organizational strategy as existing both as a routine flow of individual actions, included in the durée of daily practices, social and systemically integrated, and as rules and resources mnemonically preserved that promotes the generation of effects that distance itself in space and time and that can be observed by an analyst by means of its preceding factors, its current dynamic development and its consequences and future implications once he establishes an empirically analytical point of departure to the analysis. Este ensayo objetiva presentar conjunto de recomendaciones teóricas y metodológicas con la finalidad de guiar la investigación sobre la estrategia. Basado en un análisis de la evolución de los estudios en la literatura sobre estrategia de la organización, se hace énfasis en sus principales hipótesis y las características comunes y diferenciadoras, culminando con la presentación desde la perspectiva de la estrategia-como-práctica. A pesar de las contribuciones aportadas por este último enfoque en relación a las teorías anteriores, se ha desconectado de la dimensión de la organización, un elemento propio de la definición del fenómeno de la estrategia. En razón de esto, es necesario volver a examinar la relación entre el organizing y el strategizing. Siguiendo una tendencia en la literatura, que presenta la posibilidad de aproximar las teorías de estrategia y las teorías de organizaciones, se sugiere que el enfoque de la teoría institucional puede contribuir para ampliar la perspectiva de la estrategia-como-práctica y mediar en su relación con el enfoque estructuracionista, teniendo en cuenta su aplicabilidad a la comprensión de la estrategia de la organización como práctica. Sin embargo, se considera que los estudios sobre la estrategia institucional tienden a mantener un punto de vista dualista común a las tradicionales perspectivas de la estrategia, lo que requiere una reorientación de la investigación institucionalista con base en los supuestos de la teoría de la estructuración de modo a mayorar su capacidad analítica. A partir de este primer debate, se presenta la necesidad de entender la estrategia a fortiori, a aceptar su constitución como un conjunto de prácticas definido y delimitado en el tiempo-espacio, que adquiere una cierta configuración y se presenta a investigadores y profesionales de diferentes maneras en vista de su desarrollo como un flujo de acciones continuas y discontinuas re(producidas) basado en, y por medio de, ciertas estructuras sociales y organizacionales. A partir de esta reformulación, se muestra improductiva la desconexión de la estrategia y organización, y se presenta la necesidad de comprender la estrategia como una práctica de la organización que existe tanto como un flujo rutinero de las acciones individuales, insertado en la durée de las prácticas cotidianas, integradas social y sistémicamente, así como normas y recursos mnemotécnicamente preservados y que promueve la generación de efectos que se distancian en el tiempo-espacio y puede ser observada por el analista en sus factores anteriores, en la dinámica de desarrollo actual y en sus consecuencias e implicaciones futuras a partir de un marco de análisis empírico.

We present an exploratory analysis of historical narratives and data covering 200 years of beer brewing in the Canadian province of Ontario. These data are used to illuminate the process of collective identity emergence in established organisational fields. We argue that established fields are typically littered with identity remnants from ancestral organisations and related institutional configurations that can facilitate the successful emergence of new collective identities. In our analysis we first show how multiple identity elements fell by the wayside as the beer brewing field matured and settled on a corporate path. We go on to detail how some of these identity elements were subsequently recovered during the recent decades which marked the successful emergence and proliferation of craft beer brewing. Our study has implications for research on collective identity and organisational legacy, and we stress the importance of taking a historical lens for understanding present day phenomena.

O objetivo deste artigo é avaliar a percepção de servidores públicos quanto à qualidade dos papéis desempenhados pelaárea de Recursos Humanos (RH). Para tanto foi realizada uma pesquisa descritiva do tipo survey com 332 servidores dasáreas meio do Governo Estadual de Mato Grosso. Os dados foram coletados em período único e avaliados com medidasde estatística descritiva e análise de variância. A análise dos dados indica que não existem diferenças significativas entre asmédias de avaliação dos papéis de RH no Governo Estadual de Mato Grosso e as médias encontradas pelas pesquisas realizadasem empresas privadas. Os resultados mostram a necessidade do RH de estabelecer uma maior coerência entre a suaautoimagem e as expectativas e necessidades dos servidores com relação aos serviços prestados pela área.

Recent scholarship suggests that an inextricable link exists between collective memory and collective identity. Scholars have helped advance the idea that the features collectives deem central and ...

How is rhetorical history used to legitimate new industries that are considered morally dubious or even reprehensible by many stakeholders? This paper seeks to answer this question and in so doing ...

The literature on the role of history in strategy mainly draws on path dependency, leaving little room for managerial agency. An emerging literature on how organizations use the past seeks to addre...

The organizational field has become an influential construct in management theory. Despite its prominence, the construct has defied precise definition. Most definitions emphasize either structural elements of fields (fields as place) or their ideational elements (fields as meaning systems). Missing from this analysis is an appreciation of how meaning is given to structural relations. The authors’ core thesis is that memory is a critically important bridging construct through which meaning is given to place. They demonstrate that organizational fields are historical accretions of shared memories that are reproduced and become objectified over time until they acquire the status of ontological reality. The term mnemonic fields is introduced to capture the understanding that fields are cognitions of network relations that are created, maintained and changed through processes of collective remembering.

How history in organizations is understood has changed. A static view of history, one focused on the liabilities brought by history to organizations, has been increasingly questioned leading to the...

The recent interest in the relationship between history and organizations has fueled the emergence of a general inquiry on how to develop research on history in the field organization studies. Cons...

Nos últimos anos, verificam-se crescente consciência e preocupação dos pesquisadores da área de Estudos Organizacionais com relação à importância da História e do desenvolvimento de pesquisas históricas para a compreensão dos objetos de estudo da disciplina. No entanto, qualquer pesquisa que se dedique a resgatar traços de situações, eventos e acontecimentos passados estará, necessariamente, restrita às reminiscências desse período. Dessa forma, qualquer clamor pela descoberta do passado precisa estar acompanhado de outro, que demanda também a preservação e disponibilização dos vestígios e fontes que lhe proporcionem acesso. Defende-se, como argumento central deste trabalho, a necessidade de discussão e avaliação da atual situação dos arquivos empresariais brasileiros, a fim de promover o desenvolvimento de ações e projetos de melhoria voltados à preservação e disponibilização de arquivos empresariais para a pesquisa na área de Estudos Organizacionais. Assim, o interesse no fortalecimento dos programas de preservação e dos empreendimentos dedicados aos arquivos empresariais brasileiros demanda que sejam equacionadas as possibilidades de contribuição de agentes públicos e privados. Estes integrariam seus esforços na construção de projetos e programas dedicados a recuperar documentos e registros sobre a história das organizações brasileiras, reunir e organizar adequadamente esses registros em coleções e arquivos bem estruturados, além de disponibilizar os acervos das diversas instituições dedicadas aos arquivos empresariais para a realização de pesquisas. Essa é uma etapa necessária e fundamental para garantir a disponibilidade de matéria-prima para pesquisas dedicadas a desvendar a história das empresas e do desenvolvimento da Administração no Brasil. In the last couple of years, there has been a growing concern of researchers from the field of Organization Studies with regard to the importance of History and the development of historical researches aiming to understand the study object of this discipline. However, any research trying to recover evidence from past situations, events, and happenings will necessarily be restricted to the reminiscences of that time. Thus, any clamor for discovering the past needs to be followed by another one, also demanding the preservation and availability of traces and sources which give it some point of entry. One may claim as the main argument of this paper the need for discussing and evaluating the current status of the Brazilian business archives, in order to promote the development of actions and projects to improve the preservation and availability of business archives to researches in the field of Organization Studies. Therefore, the interest in strengthening preservation programs and initiatives dedicated to the Brazilian business archives requires determining the possibilities of contribution from public and private agents. They might join their efforts to develop projects and programs dedicated to recover documents and records about the Brazilian organizations, properly gather and organize these records into well-structured collections and files, as well as provide researchers with access to the collections of the many institutions dedicated to keep business archives. This is a necessary and crucial step to guarantee the availability of raw material for researches aiming to unveil the history of companies and the development of Management in Brazil.

Despite extensive scholarship elsewhere, organizational history remains relatively unexplored in the field of management. In order to help rectify this, we draw on the two most prominent branches of the history literature to construct a typology of organizational historical narratives—stories told to present audiences using objects from the past. In the process, our typology bridges the divide between these ontological and epistemological perspectives. Moreover, we then use this typology to theorize the conditions under which different historical narratives are of value. As a result, we build an understanding of the historical work conducted by organizations to re-construct the past, today.

Neste artigo, o foco recai sobre a qualificação dos professores, em seu percurso profissional, por meio da realização de pós-doutorado. Destaca-se que pesquisas a respeito dessa forma de qualificação ainda são escassas. Este artigo tem, portanto, o propósito de investigar o perfil e a atual configuração de professores atuantes nos Programas de Pós-Graduação em Administração stricto sensu qualificados pela CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior) em níveis 5, 6 e 7, que realizaram pós-doutorado. No trabalho desenvolvido por Castro, Porto e Júnior (2009), os autores argumentam que a dinâmica do Sistema Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia apresenta uma dependência de atualização e uma crescente necessidade de prontidão dos docentes atuantes em pesquisa na pós-graduação brasileira. Na pesquisa descritiva foram identificados os docentes que haviam realizado pelo menos um pós-doutorado. Consideraram-se os dados relativos ao triênio 2007-2009. Verificou-se a configuração por meio de gênero, ano de realização do pós-doutorado, se a instituição é nacional ou estrangeira; instituição de origem do pós-doutorado e quanto tempo após o doutorado realizou o pós-doutorado. Por fim, delineou-se uma agenda de estudos com vistas à continuidade da exploração do tema.

Discordando do individualismo metodológico que permeia a maioria das pesquisas sobre o papel e a atuação dos estrategistas na 'Estratégia como Prática', o presente artigo analisa quem são os estrategistas organizacionais, empreendendo discussão e crítica pautadas em pesquisas publicadas seguindo tal vertente. Esse argumento é desenvolvido principalmente oferecendo evidências empíricas para o que se defende, mediante estudo de caso qualitativo sobre o processo de mudança do projeto gráfico de um periódico paranaense. Utilizando conceitos do institucionalismo organizacional para a análise do caso, defende-se ser equivocada a excessiva ênfase no nível microssocial de análise para entender-se quem são os estrategistas, por esta desconsiderar a importância da di­mensão institucional, sua relevância na constituição identitária desse sujeito nas organizações, e a problemática que decorre em se estudar a prática e a práxis estratégica independentemente da influência de estruturas sociais mais amplas.

ResumoEste ensaio apresenta estrutura analítica que busca conciliar elementos da agência e do contexto na análise de processos de mudança institucional. A estrutura está baseada na articulação entre as abordagens do institutional work e da mudança institucional gradual. Ambas as abordagens foram criadas como alternativas a perspectivas que enfatizavam demasiadamente elementos estruturais (como a path dependence theory) ou a ação (como o empreendedorismo institucional). No entanto, apesar dos ganhos analíticos que ambas trouxeram para o estudo da mudança institucional, ainda mantêm fortes vínculos com os pressupostos das tradições de pesquisa das quais emergiram. Uma aproximação entre tais esquemas teóricos permite maior rigor para investigar processos de mudança institucional e possibilita aos pesquisadores maior consciência sobre os pressupostos inerentes a cada perspectiva, assim como incentiva a busca por abordagens que encadeiem elementos capazes de prover explicação adequada para a manutenção e a mudança institucionais. No centro dessa proposta, encontra-se a busca por entender a dinâmica da vida institucional. O contexto institucional possui certo nível de plasticidade e pode ser modificado de acordo com a disponibilidade de práticas, significados e recursos. A efetivação desse potencial de mudança está relacionada à capacidade dos atores, seus níveis de reflexividade institucional e munificência de recursos. As práticas de criação, manutenção e dirupção das instituições em determinado contexto serão, portanto, resultado da interação entre as características do contexto institucional (nível de plasticidade institucional) e dos tipos de atores sociais (nível de discricionariedade institucional).