Institutional Work: Actors and Agency in Institutional Studies of Organizations

Institutional Work: Actors and Agency in Institutional Studies of Organizations By Thomas ? Lawrence, Roy Suddaby and Bernard Leca Cambridge University Press, UK, 2009, Pages: 336, Price: $54.93 ISBN978-0-521-51885-0Academic interest in institutional studies of organization has a long history, starting with classical works of Max Weber, Philip Selznick, etc., in late 1940s. In last two decades, there has been an upsurge in on institutional studies of organization with publication of some commendable (Powell and DiMaggio, 1991; and Greenwood et al, 2008). The initial focus of scholars in institutional theory was on explanation of organizational similarities (isomorphism) in organizational field. In late 1990, focus shifted to explaining institutional change due exogenous elements, followed by institutional entrepreneurship and institutional logic. Institutional entrepreneurship aims at explaining an endogenous change to institutions. It thrusts on importance of agency in actors and attempts to resolve paradox of embedded agency: how can actors change if their actions, intentions, are constrained by same institution which they wish to change (Holm, 1995; and Seo and Creed, 2002). Institutional entrepreneurship has emphasized on role of actors in creating new institutions. However, in recent years, there has been significant stress on understanding role of actors in transforming and maintaining institutions. Lawrence and Suddaby (2006) refer to this as institutional work, the purposive action of individual and organization aimed at creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions (p. 215). Institutional has become a bridge between on institutional entrepreneurship (focusing on creating new institutions) and deinstitutionalization (focusing on death of institutions). Since foundational by Lawrence and Suddaby (2006), institutional has gained attention in academic world of organization studies as evident from flourishing research works shared through academic platform( EGOS1, 2008) Sub theme: 222; EGOS (2012) Sub theme: 163).This book is a collection of revealing paper on institutional put together by Lawrence, Suddaby and Leca, to speak on a central issue: how individual actor produce, sustain, and transform while protecting their personal interests? As evident from title, concept of institutional is primary theme around which all papers are written. The book is divided into three sections: introduction, essays on institutional comprising of four chapters on theory, and studies of institutional assembling six empirical papers. Each of four theoretical chapters focuses on distinct elements of institutional like multidimensional agency in institutional work, leadership as institutional work, geographic location of institutional work, and issues of contradiction in institutional work. The empirical papers are about application of institutional work: two are about creating institutions, two are about maintaining and rests are about interplay among maintenance and disruption of institutional work.Introduction chapter by Lawrence, Suddaby, and Leca, raises three main issues related to institutional work- accomplishment, intentionality, and effort. Creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions signifies activities, while creation, maintenance and disruption of institutions refer to accomplishment. They argue that it is activities which are at core of institutional and not accomplishments. Activities as institutional broaden domain for exploration in institutional and also bring in issue of unintended consequences, which accomplishment fails to do. Activities imported notion of intentionality into heart of institutional work. Intentionality determines what is to be considered as institutional and what is not. The third element, effort, is fetched in to explore notion of work in institutional work. …