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This paper seeks to advance understanding of how new social venturescan gain legitimacy in authoritarian contexts. Through a study of a newdisability rights organization in post-revolutionary Egypt, we theorizehow authoritarianism poses distinct challenges for social ventures thatrequire different legitimation strategies than those commonly reported inthe literature. Specifically, we use our case study to build a theoreticalmodel that suggests social ventures need to achieve optimal assimilationby balancing protective disguise with harmonious advocacy. By explicitlytheorizing social venture legitimation in authoritarian contexts, weadvance the budding literature on social venture legitimation that has sofar predominantly considered legitimation in more democratic contexts.Moreover, our study shows that organizational legitimacy may need tobe conceptualized differently when examining social ventures—andindeed other forms of organization—in authoritarian regimes.

We examine how organizations can challenge institutions that are coercively protected by powerful elites – guarded institutions – when they are unable or unwilling to advocate publicly against them. To do so, we draw on an in-depth qualitative study of efforts to combat child marriage in Indonesia. We explore how an international children’s rights organization worked alongside local NGOs and activists to disrupt the institution of child marriage through two discrete strategies: the crafting of an alter ego that takes the appearance of a social movement that has emanated from the grassroots but is actually highly organized; and the use of this alter ego to support the incubation of public dissent by means of a high-stakes event. We contribute to the literature by developing a theorized account of how organizations can challenge guarded institutions when they cannot speak out – an important organizational problem that has received limited attention. We also challenge the theoretical distinction that has been drawn between the organizational mobilization of activists, often referred to as astroturfing, and seemingly organic mobilization that is said to emerge at the grassroots.

Many new ventures have to pivot – radically transform what they are about – because their original approach has failed. However, pivoting risks disrupting relationships with key stakeholders, such as user communities, who identify with ventures. Stakeholders may respond by withdrawing support and starving ventures of the resources needed to thrive. This can pose an existential threat to ventures, yet it is unclear how they can manage this problem. To explore this important phenomenon, we conduct a qualitative process study of The Impossible Project, a photography venture which encountered significant resistance from its user community as it pivoted from an analog focus to an analog-digital positioning. We develop a process model of stakeholder identification management that reveals how ventures can use identification reset work to defuse tensions with stakeholders whose identification with the venture is threatened. A core finding is that ventures can remove the affective hostility of stakeholders and rebuild connections with many of them by exposing their struggles, thus creating a bond focused around these shared experiences. We offer contributions to scholarship on identification management, user community identification, and pivoting.

The authors draw on emerging research in organization theory to suggest how different firm-level identity orientations (individualistic, relational, or collectivistic) impact governance choice. They develop a conceptual framework that focuses on the relationship between a focal firm’s own identity orientation and that of a value chain partner. The framework identifies a series of match and mismatch scenarios, where the latter represent unique governance problems that are not accounted for by existing theory. Some of the mismatch scenarios involve pseudo-matches that resemble convergent orientations between parties but actually represent governance problems. Theoretically, this framework advances the governance literature by providing a comprehensive and nuanced account of (1) the orientations that parties bring to bear on a relationship, and (2) how their effects vary depending on the interdependence structure between the parties. The authors also advance the general literature on identity orientation by connecting it to concrete governance practices, by showing how multiple internal identity orientations create unique internal governance challenges, and by delineating two possible solutions to these challenges. They rely on the framework to develop managerial guidelines for governance choice.

Purpose is a concept often used in managerial communities to signal and define a firm’s benevolent and pluralistic approach to its stakeholders beyond its focus on shareholders. While some evidence has linked purpose to positive organizational outcomes such as growth, employee satisfaction, innovation, and superior stock market performance, the definition and application of purpose in management research has been varied and frequently ambiguous. We review literature streams that invoke purpose in the for-profit firm and propose a unifying definition. Next, we develop a framework to study purpose that decouples its framing and formalization within firms from its realization, thus helping to avoid conflation of the presence of purpose with positive organizational outcomes. The framework also highlights internal and external drivers that shape the framing of purpose as well as the influence of the institutional context on its adoption and effectiveness. Finally, we provide a rich agenda for future research on purpose.

This study gives insights into how marginalized logics evolve after having been replaced by a new dominant logic. In light of the case of UK trade book publishing where an editorial logic persisted and morphed after the increasing commercialization of the field – epitomized by the proliferation of so-called “factory fiction” – the authors identify three generative paths of marginalized logic evolution: preservation, purification and radicalization. The authors show how these paths hinge on the activities of three groups of actors who resist conforming to a dominant logic. The findings of this study advance scholars’ understanding of the historical evolution of institutional logics, but also remind them that the acts of resistance are typically embedded in macro-level dynamics related to broader institutional processes. In particular, this study sheds light on the different ways in which acts of resistance may be structured by actors’ experience of friction between competing institutional logics.

Based on an in-depth historical study of how Thomas Cook’s travel agency moved from stigmatization to legitimacy among the elite of Victorian Britain, we develop a model of organizational destigmatization. We find that audiences stigmatize an organization because they fear that it threatens a particular moral order, which leads them to mount sustained attacks designed to weaken or eradicate the organization. Our model suggests that an organization that experiences this form of profound disapproval can nonetheless purge its stigma and become legitimate through a two-step process: first the organization engages in stigma reduction work designed to minimize overt hostility among audiences by showing that it does not pose a risk to them. Second it engages in stigma elimination work designed to gain support from stigmatizers by showing that it plays a positive role in society. Our study therefore reorients organizational stigma research from a focus on how organizations can cope with the effects of stigma, and considers instead how they can eradicate the stigma altogether. We also shed light on much neglected audience-level dynamics by examining the process through which audiences construct stigma and why these constructions may change.

Poor places across the globe have pressing needs, not least because the social, economic, and environmental issues that challenge us all have a disproportionate impact upon them. Innovation...

We investigate how established professionals manage their identities in the face of identity threats from a contested shift in the professional logic that characterizes their field. To do so, we draw on interviews with 113 physicians from five European transition countries who faced pressure for change in their professional identities due to a shift in the logic of healthcare from a logic of “narrow specialism” in primary care that characterized the Soviet health system to a new logic of “generalism” that characterizes primary care in the West. We found three important forms of professional identity threats experienced by physicians during this period – professional values conflict, status loss, and social identity conflict. In addition, we identified three forms of identity work – authenticating, reframing, and cultural repositioning – that the professionals who successfully transitioned to the new identity performed in order to reconstruct their professional identities so that they were aligned with the new logic. Based on these findings, we present a model of how established professionals change their professional identities as a result of a contested shift in the professional logic of their field and discuss the underlying mechanisms through which this occurs.

Place and space have long been the focus of studies of organizations (e.g. Bucher & Langley, 2016; Elsbach, 2004; Elsbach & Pratt, 2007; Tuan, 1974), but only recently were explored, mostly indirectly, in institutional studies. For example, recent work examines the role of place in institutional change on the organizational (Kellogg, 2009), community (Marquis & Battilana, 2009), field (Cartel, Boxenbaum, & Aggeri, 2018; Lounsbury, 2007; Ziestma & Lawrence, 2010; Zilber, 2018), or societal levels (Mair, 2012). Recent studies also explore the role of place in institutional work (Lawrence & Dover, 2015) and in reviving tradition (Dacin, Nasra, & Leithwood, 2009). Our symposium explores the situatedness of institutional dynamics. Through the presentation of four empirical studies, we will discuss how place impacts the salience, resonance, strength and scope of institutions. With an introduction to place at the beginning, discussant’s comments and a directed Q&A with audience participation at the end, this symposium will also explore the value of place to broader discussions about institutions.

This in-depth historical study explores the ways in which two tobacco manufacturers appropriated over a century the cultural resources produced by feminist movements in order to legitimate an incre...

The term ‘social innovation’ is used to describe a broad range of organizational and inter-organizational activity that is ostensibly designed to address the most deep-rooted ‘problems’ of society,...

In this inductive study, we shift the focus of stigma research inside organizational boundaries by examining its relationship with organizational identity. To do so, we draw on the case of Keystone, a social enterprise in the East of England that became stigmatized after it initiated a program of support for a group of migrants in its community. Keystone’s stigmatization precipitated a crisis of organizational identity. We examine how the identity crisis unfolded, focusing on the forms of identity work that Keystone’s leaders enacted in response in order to reframe the meaning that organizational members attached to the stigma. Interestingly, we show not only that the internal effects of stigmatization on identity can be managed, but also that they may facilitate unexpected positive outcomes for organizations.

We draw on institutional theory to study a common type of new venture creation that has been neglected in the literature: the translation of an existing organizational form from a different – and misaligned – institutional context. To do so we conducted an in-depth case study of H-Farm, an Italian venture that was founded as a business incubator, a type of organization that first emerged in Silicon Valley and other US technology regions. Our study illuminates the specific configuration of legitimacy pressures inherent in this type of entrepreneurship, and theorizes the strategies that entrepreneurs can enact to address them: local authentication work, category authentication work, and dual optimal distinctiveness work. We also show that the legitimacy pressures experienced by entrepreneurs may vary significantly as ventures mature, and challenge the notion of a specific “legitimacy threshold” that new ventures are required to reach. Finally, our model conceptualizes translation as an iterative, dynamic and ongoing accomplishment rather than a “one off” activity with clear beginning and end points.

In this paper we argue that formal exchanges with poor consumers in emerging markets are hard to create and maintain, resulting in widespread market failure. More specifically, in emerging markets the institutions required for exchange either function poorly or are entirely absent, making it difficult for sellers to deliver affordable and accessible offerings to poor buyers in a financially sustainable manner. The marketing challenge thus becomes (1) developing a viable business model to facilitate market-based exchanges and (2) shaping the institutions needed to implement this business model. Drawing on institutional theory and extending it with insights from the marketing and business model innovation literatures, we develop a model of exchange in emerging markets. At the heart of our model is the idea that sellers often need to act as institutional entrepreneurs in order to create and deliver value when marketing to the poor in emerging markets. We discuss the implications of our model for future research on marketing, exchange and emerging economies, as well as the implications for managers seeking to market to the poor in emerging economies.

This chapter makes the case that institutional and paradox theorists should consider problems stretching beyond managerial concerns and corporate performance to focus attention on the paradoxes that characterize the most deep-rooted and contentious social issues facing societies and economies, suggesting a switch from organizational to institutional paradoxes. To illustrate, two vignettes are described—one focused on the legacy of the University of Georgetown’s slave-trading past, the other on the identity challenges faced by working-class people attending Cambridge University. Drawing from these vignettes, three sets of theoretical insights are presented which are fundamental to institutional paradox: that institutional paradoxes may be rooted in a desire for legitimacy; that temporality is a dynamic at the core of institutional paradox; and that the metaphor of multiple interconnected fault lines better captures the complexity inherent in paradox at the institutional level than the metaphor of dualities.

Audiences frequently change how they evaluate organizations, and these judgments often have a moral basis. For example, audiences may shift their evaluation from stigmatization to legitimacy or vice versa. These radical shifts in audience evaluation can have a major impact on organizations, yet organization theory struggles to account for them. We offer a solution to this problem by proposing a spectrum of moral evaluation that situates key moral judgments relative to each other. Our core argument is that integrating stigmatization and moral legitimacy into a broader spectrum of moral evaluation provides organization theorists with a much-needed toolkit to explore the consequential normative transformations often experienced by contemporary organizations. Specifically, it allows for a graded conception of moral evaluation, connects concepts – stigma and legitimacy – that are often considered in isolation, and offers opportunities for theoretical cross-fertilization.

In this chapter, we have two aims: to review the first decade of research on institutional work, and to explore how the institutional work perspective can have a greater impact on institutions “that matter”. We structure our review around the “what”, “who” and “how” of institutional work to highlight key developments and identify problematic gaps. We find that scholarship in this tradition has focused primarily on middle-range institutions with limited scope, relatively homogenous actor networks, and the use of symbolic work. This has come at the expense of research on large-scale institutions with cross-field impacts, heterogeneous actor networks, and the use of material as well relational work. We argue it will be crucial to address these shortcomings if we are to enable the institutional work perspective to become a practical and impactful tool for addressing major social problems. This chapter encourages scholars to develop research on institutional work to tackle the challenges surrounding the institutions that matter.

This symposium invites consideration of the ways in which organizations interact with marginalized groups and to what effect. While such groups are, by definition, shunned by parts of society, ther...

Over the past few decades, research on stigma has taken on a lively life within the academy and the broader community of organizational researchers beyond the disciplines of social psychology and s...

This study gives insights into how marginal actors are able to resist a logic that has started to characterise a field. Based on the case of how small independent book publishers in the UK fight the increasing commercialisation of trade publishing that has led to the emergence of “factory fiction”, we identify three groups of resistant actors: preservers, who maintain an alternative minority logic, innovators, who purify a minority logic, and reformers, who radicalise a minority logic. We find that non-powerful, marginal actors can radically detach themselves from a dominant logic through causing internal logic shifts in a way that allows them to build a distinct niche for themselves. Our multi-level process model of institutional resistance suggests that resistance is a creative, rather than destructive, process that can lead to the emergence of new alternative norms, which give meaning to actors located at the periphery of a field. We contribute by addressing the issue of power asymmetries within institutional fields, giving insights into how marginal actors can emancipate themselves from dominant logics. Furthermore, our concepts of logic purification and radicalisation challenge the common conceptualisations of a dilution or weakening of minority logics once another logic has started to become dominant.

In this article, we present the results of a case study of an entrepreneur who successfully founded and grew a venture underpinned by a portfolio of strongly homophilous, dyadic ties. Building on our case, we discuss how the entrepreneur strategically constructed these ties through a form of narrative identity work, explore the shared identity narratives that he used to do so, and highlight the heterogeneous nature of the resulting tie portfolio. We go on to explore the factors that motivated the entrepreneur to purposefully construct an entrepreneurial tie portfolio in this way. Building on our findings, we discuss the nature of narrative identity work and its role in creating homophilous ties, explore the connection between the resulting shared identity narratives and trust, and discuss the central role of values in strategic homophily.

In this chapter, we explore how the concept of organizational identity has evolved in institutional theory. We begin by examining the different ways that organizational identity has been conceptualized and explain the evolving theoretical interests that lie behind the approaches that have been taken. Building on this, we discuss how organizational identity research might benefit from closer engagement with ideas from institutional theory. In particular, we discuss three possible directions for further development. First, we discuss how Selznick’s work emphasizes the historical, holistic, and value-driven nature of identity and why this is helpful for further developing thinking around organizational identity. Second, we explain how more recent developments in institutional theory such as institutional logics, institutional work, and collective identity provide an important bridge for connecting research in organizational identity and research in institutional theory. And, third, we explore how we might build a comprehensive, multi-level theory of organizational identity and institutions.

Organizational success increasingly depends on leaders’ abilities to address competing demands simultaneously. Scholars have applied both institutional theory and paradox theory to better understand the nature and responses to these competing demands. These two lenses diverge in their understanding and responses to tensions. Institutional theory depicts competing demands emerging from divergent field-level pressures and stresses their contradictory and oppositional nature. Organizational responses vary from making tradeoffs and choosing pressures with which to conform to seeking strategies for engaging both and managing conflict. Paradox theory locates competing demands as inherent with organizational systems, surfaced through environmental conditions, individual sensemaking, or relational dialogue. According to these scholars, paradoxes are contradictory, interdependent, and persist over time, demanding strategies for engaging and accommodating tensions but not resolving them. In this essay, we highlight these distinctions and argue that drawing from both of these lenses will results in rich, generative theorizing to better address key challenges in the world. We identify specific areas where future research can benefit from such integration.

European integration has prompted great interest in the adjustment capacities of small and medium enterprises in regions characterized by high levels of unemployment and lower-than-average incomes. At issue, in these circumstances, is the extent to which economic competitiveness can be enhanced by technological change and the resources of European and national governments. Relying upon the results of a detailed survey of small- and medium-sized firm competitive strategies in selected vulnerable regions across Europe, the paper focuses upon firm adjustment strategies in four labour-intensive industries vulnerable to international competition. It draws together the results of these surveys providing econometric and statistical analyses that demonstrate the commonalities and differences apparent in small- and medium- sized firms' responses to changing market competition. Significant insights were gleaned from the pooling of these data. It is shown that there are statistically significant firm, country and industry effects in competitive strategies. Unlike many other related studies, the derived results are quite consistent across Europe. Furthermore, statistically significant relationships are established between changes in market sales, local employment and the adoption of process-specific technologies. The findings provide robust conclusions about the significance of country and industry determinants of European small and medium enterprises' competitive strategies in relation to the expanding European and global economy. In sum, the paper raises doubts about the value of regional development strategies that rely exclusively upon clusters and geographical embeddedness in the face of globalization.

Broadly speaking, three rival approaches to comparative research can be identified. One suggests that the study of different countries and their regions is unproblematic, and is best exemplified by scholarship in mainstream (particularly neoclassical) economics. Stress is placed on an integrated theoretical perspective emphasizing apparent similarities while explaining differences by reference to the heritage of nations and places. By way of contrast a second approach, which owes much to anthropology, relies on case studies and presumes the existence of profound differences between countries and regions. Stress is placed upon the local cultural, social and political factors that sustain persistent difference. A third approach is rooted in new institutional economics and argues for the significance of national institutional frameworks, supposing that those frameworks shape and structure the actions of agents. Whatever their differences and origins, idealism drives each method of comparative study. In this article, we consider these rival theories of comparative study, and suggest an alternative model based upon a set of fundamental assumptions about the nature of human cognition. These assumptions are the building blocks for our analysis, which has global applicability. We focus in particular upon consciousness and reflexivity, the interplay between agency and structure, and the connection between intention and rationality. Implications are then drawn for the practice of comparative studies. In the penultimate section of the article we comment on the limits of comparative studies emphasizing the problems that lie behind the translation of complex concepts within and between languages.

This paper focuses on the importance of the institutional context in shaping the nature of entrepreneurship in emerging markets. More specifically, the paper argues that while the high degree of institutional uncertainty in emerging markets often acts as a barrier to entrepreneurship, it can also provide important opportunities for entrepreneurs. We argue for the usefulness of recent work in neo-institutional theory as an approach to understanding the institutional context of emerging economies, and in particular for exploring the relationship between institutional uncertainty and entrepreneurship in emerging markets. Drawing on neo-institutional theory, the paper develops a typology of possible institutional strategies available to entrepreneurs in emerging markets. Three strategies are identified: institutional brokering, spanning institutional voids, and bridging institutional distance. The success factors associated with each strategy are also considered. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the framework for theory development and points to a number of areas for future research.

We examine the role of rituals in institutional maintenance. Through an in-depth, qualitative study of formal dining at the University of Cambridge, we explore how the performance of these rituals contributes to the maintenance of the British class system. We find that rituals are important for institutional maintenance because they have a powerful bearing on participants beyond the confines of the rituals themselves. Our analysis also suggests that institutions are refracted through context and individual experience at a micro level, and indicates a more fragmented and less strategic conception of institutional maintenance than is portrayed in recent work.

This study delivers insights into how heterogeneous promoters and adopters of an idea can overcome asymmetries regarding their life- worlds and positions of power to achieve idea translation. Based...

Current theorizations of bricolage in entrepreneurship studies require refinement and development to be used as a theoretical framework for social entrepreneurship. Our analysis traces bricolage's conceptual underpinnings from various disciplines, identifying its key constructs as making do, a refusal to be constrained by limitations, and improvisation. Although these characteristics appear to epitomize the process of creating social enterprises, our research identifies three further constructs associated with social entrepreneurship: social value creation, stakeholder participation, and persuasion. Using data from a qualitative study of eight U.K. social enterprises, we apply the bricolage concept to social entrepreneurial action and propose an extended theoretical framework of social bricolage.

Social enterprises are non-profit organizations that seek to achieve social goals through commercial activity. Because they have both social and commercial objectives, social enterprises are confronted with high levels of complexity in their strategizing and operations; not only do they have to generate sufficient revenue to re-invest in their business operations, they also have to maintain investment in social projects in their community. Under conditions of resource scarcity, this poses severe challenges which can threaten the long-term sustainability of the enterprise. In this paper the tension between allocating resources to commercial activity and social action is explored. A simple causal-loop diagram is constructed which maps out the relationships between resource allocation and a number of other variables thought to influence the sustainability of social enterprises. By tracing through the diagram, a range of generic strategic alternatives available to social enterprises is evaluated and discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

We introduce a model of interorganizational governance within regional clusters. Drawing on the “new institutional economics” literature, we show how firms' governance designs are shaped by the relationship between transaction-level characteristics and the cluster macroculture. We then consider how subsequent transaction-level governance designs are affected by path dependencies from past governance choices. Finally, we suggest that intertransactional path dependencies exhibit directional asymmetries, and we draw implications for the literature on clusters, on transaction costs, and on interorganizational relationships.

Research in international management (IM) has long recognized the importance of understanding the institutional differences between countries. Indeed, ‘a basic premise of much of IM research has been that firms are embedded in country-specific institutional arrangements’ (Busenitz et al., 2000: 994). One important strand of this literature focuses on institutional distance: ‘the difference/similarity between the regulatory, cognitive, and normative institutions of . . . two countries’ (Kostova and Zaheer, 1999: 71). However, the version of institutional theory that this work draws upon is dated and narrow, and this limits the usefulness of the concept. In this essay, we argue for a new conceptualization of institutional distance based on recent developments in new institutional theory (see Greenwood et al., 2008). More specifically, we argue that institutional distance should be reconceptualized in three ways. First, we argue that institutionalization is a matter of degree and that low levels of institutionalization increase institutional distance. Current conceptualizations of institutional distance fail to include this effect. Second, we argue that including the concept of organizational field allows for a multi-level analysis that incorporates subnational, national and supranational institutional differences resulting in a better measurement. Finally, we introduce the concept of institutional entrepreneurship to discussions of institutional distance. This provides an exciting new opportunity for theorizing about the activities of firms involved in international activity. STRATEGIC ORGANIZATION Vol 7(3): 339–348 DOI: 10.1177/1476127009337439 © The Author(s), 2009 Reprints and Permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav http://so.sagepub.com

We augment social exchange theory with dialectical theory to build a framework to examine corporate—social enterprise collaborations. These cross-sector collaborations represent a novel form of political-economic arrangement seeking to reconcile the efficient functioning of markets with the welfare of communities. We propose that corporate—social enterprise collaborations are shaped by (1) the value that each member of the collaboration attributes to their partner’s inputs, (2) competing practices and priorities intrinsic to the corporation and the social enterprise, and (3) expected benefits of the collaboration to each partner. For a synthesized state of collaboration to emerge and the partnership to be sustained, we posit that the antithetical forces inherent within the relationship must be resolved.

This article considers the capabilities entrepreneurs require to create successful new international ventures. An in-depth case study of a successful serial entrepreneur and the two international new ventures he founded leads the authors to propose three entrepreneurial capabilities that are particularly important for successful international new venture creation – international opportunity identification, institutional bridging, and a capacity and preference for cross-cultural collaboration. The article also considers how budding international entrepreneurs can develop such capabilities in order to improve their chances of international new venture success, and concludes with a discussion of the implications of the authors' findings for entrepreneurship research and practice.