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The cognitive turn in institutional theory has led to the systematic neglect of people's sensory capacities. In this paper we offer a cross-level theory of the role in institutional processes of sensory and evaluative forms of knowledge. Called here the aesthetic mode, this way of knowing combines humans' innate sensory capacity to engage the world with their learned capacity to evaluate what they encounter. We argue that people evaluate the world's natural, social, and spiritual phenomena through the lenses of a personal aesthetic, each person's distinct internalization of the institutional aesthetic codes of the communities in which they are in embedded. A personal aesthetic informs and animates people's internal conversations as they evaluate the social arrangements they encounter and deliberate over how they should participate in the institutional processes of maintaining, disrupting, or creating social arrangements. Attending to people's aesthetic ways of knowing positions us to better understand when, why, and how people deliberate about institutional values and arrangements and choose to engage in purposive institutional work. It also offers a way of conceptualizing and examining the reflexivity said to be at the heart of embedded agency. We discuss the implications for understanding of institutional work, institutional biography, and of how people experience institutional disruption and re-creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use a dialectical perspective to provide a unique framework for understanding institutional change that more fully captures its totalistic, historical, and dynamic nature, as well as fundamentally resolves a theoretical dilemma of institutional theory: the relative swing between agency and embeddedness. In this framework institutional change is understood as an outcome of the dynamic interactions between two institutional by-products: institutional contradictions and human praxis. In particular, we depict praxis--agency embedded in a totality of multiple levels of interpenetrating, incompatible institutional arrangements (contradictions)--as an essential driving force of institutional change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of (self-)identity has become increasingly central to institutional theory's microfoundations, yet remains relatively underdeveloped. In this chapter, the authors use an autobiographical interview with a gay Protestant minister in the US to explore the role of narrative conventions in the construction of self-identity. The analysis of this chapter offers the basis for a new understanding of the relation between institutions, self-identity, and agency: how we agentically engage institutions depends not only on who we narrate ourselves to be, but also on how we narrate ourselves into being. This suggests that narration as a specific modality of micro-institutional processes has important performative effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why have some U.S. firms succeeded in redesigning themselves to meet competitive demands while others have not? Successful firms meet three key requirements for effective redesign: a commitment to total redesign as an economic "must," not simply an "ought," a clear strategic vision supported by the structure and process changes necessary to achieve it; and a managerial philosophy that fits the chosen strategy and structure. Some firms have been able to install an alternative strategy-structure-process package by breaking completely from the established pattern. Other firms have "rediscovered" a viable combination of strategy, structure, and philosophy by stripping away central bureaucracy. Still others have searched outside familiar models, most often in the direction of network strategies and structures. Overall, the capacity for organizational renewal comes from investing in human skills and knowledge-bases, which serve as competency reserves in changing times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay on the role of power for institutional theory is presented. Topics discussed include the importance of institutional theorists for market failure, the benefits of logics perspectives for institutional configurations, and central domains of theory of critical management such as dominance and power.

In this article, we use the case of religious research universities to explore the presence of multiple institutional logics with the potential for contradiction and conflict. In particular, building on existing research on conflicting institutional logics, we assess the most common forms of resolution (replacement, dominant logic, decoupling, compartmentalization, and coexistence) and identify the potential for a new form of resolution -- a transformative outcome that resolves the conflicts through adoption of a superordinate logic. Drawing on the history of Baylor University, we illustrate different forms of resolution, proposing its most recent efforts may represent a transformative outcome. We close by presenting a model for resolving institutional contradictions which suggest some resolutions may trigger cycles of institutionalization and deinstitutionalization when they are inherently unstable because they mitigate rather than resolve the conflict between institutional logics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The families of gay employees have recently come onto the corporate radar screen. The needs they have in common with the families of straight employees can foster connection. There are also tensions between gay and straight employees about the meanings of family, deeply rooted in the culture outside the workplace and sometimes so provocative that they appear only in indirect allusions. The case of a corporate redesign of benefits surfaces both the language of these commonalities and tensions and the underlying principles of equality versus need. Providing equal benefits for all families has the advantage of honoring equally the many ways the employees define a family, but the disadvantage of creating inequalities across families of different sizes and types. A need-based distribution has the advantage of respecting differences, but the disadvantage of requiring a way to evaluate and rank relative needs, which heightens tensions. The authors discuss how these trade-offs are voiced and played out.

The article presents a study which examines the use of social identity of employees in their encounters in the workplace. The study uses convenience sampling, and data collection and analysis to understand the micromobilizing moments of social movements in societal contexts. Result shows that employees have used the simplest form of claiming their identity in daily face-to-face encounters as a political moment.

Personnel records from a single firm is employed to derive an objectively-determined measure of status inconsistency for use in event history analyses to explore the longitudinal effect on quitting and internal job changing of failing to attain salaries levels consistent with individuals' status on a variety of human capital variables. Negatively status inconsistent employees (Negative SIs) are more likely to quit or to make permanent lateral job changes, but are no more likely to participate in job rotation programs. Female Negative SIs are less likely to quit than their male counterparts. These findings suggest that quitting, job rotations, and permanent lateral moves may represent qualitatively different strategies for mobility striving. The research uses a case study approach, employing the detailed personnel records from a single firm. Its principal goal is to explore the behavioral consequences of unmet expectations in an era of change, while also demonstrating that status inconsistency theory is a valuable complement to equity and relative deprivation in organizational behavior research.