Institutional work - Re-focusing institutional studies of organization

In this paper, we discuss an alternative focus for institutional studies of organization- the study of institutional work. Research on institutional work examines the practices of individual and collective actors aimed at creating, maintaining, and disrupting institutions. Our focus in this paper is on the distinctiveness of institutional work as a field of study and the potential it provides for the examination of new questions. We argue that research on institutional work can contribute to bringing the individual back into institutional theory, help to re-examine the relationship between agency and institutions, and provide a bridge between critical and institutional views of organization. Keywords institutional work, agency, organizations, institutions Institutional theory represents a dominant approach to the study of organizations but one that is creaking under the weight of its own theoretical apparatus. The ascendance of institutional theory as a macrotheory of organizations is at this point undeniable—ever larger swathes of conference time and journal space seem devoted to exploring issues from an insti-