Abstract
Strategy-as-practice and neo-institutionalism offer alternative approaches to studying organizations. In this essay, we examine the foundational assumptions and methods of these perspectives, unveiling different ways in which they could complement each other. In particular, we elaborate three areas of overlap: a focus on what actors actually do, their shared cognitions, and the role of language in creating shared meanings. We show how the two perspectives can inform each other and offer significant learning to organization studies more broadly.
Keywords
Introduction
This essay follows recent calls to build bridges between organizational theory and strategic management (Durand, 2012). It does so by raising awareness of growing complementarity between two approaches to understanding organizations that fall within these fields—neo-institutional theory (NIT) and strategy-as-practice (SAP). While these streams have grown separately, they have much in common. This reflects a broader trend for streams of research in strategy and organization to evolve independently, despite similar themes (Durand, 2012).
On a manifest level, there are important differences between the two perspectives. Neo-institutionalism is a well-established theoretical approach with roots in “old” institutionalism (i.e. Selznick, 1949) and strong empirical and theoretical foundations reaching back several decades (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Meyer and Rowan, 1977). SAP has more recent origins, emerging most clearly in a Journal of Management Studies special issue in 2003 (Johnson et al., 2003) and further clarified in a series of subsequent publications (cf. Johnson et al., 2007). While neo-institutionalism is typically macro in orientation, with a primary focus at the organizational field level, SAP is primarily micro in orientation, with an interest in how interactions between individuals influence competitive decisions and firm behavior.
On a latent level, however, there are important similarities between the two perspectives. For example, both emerged out of a reaction against prevailing assumptions of economic rationality. Old institutionalism was founded on the observation that organizations often act in ways that contradict economic expectations; that is, organizations respond to pressures in their social and symbolic environment rather than simply economic pressures (Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Selznick, 1949). SAP, similarly, grew in response to economic views of strategic planning, which depict an idealized “rational actor” myth of strategic decision making without fully attending to the complex and often convoluted day-to-day processes of decision making or decision makers (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007).
A closer examination of the foundational assumptions, dominant methods, and motivating questions of these two perspectives unveils different ways in which neo-institutionalism and SAP could complement each other. Neo-institutionalism, for example, has recently been criticized for problems it intended to address in macro-economic theory, such as inattention to process (Suddaby, 2010), micro-dynamics (Powell and Colyvas, 2008), practices (Lawrence et al., 2009; Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006), and individuals (Hallett, 2010; Hallett and Ventresca, 2006). These elements form the foundation of SAP.
Reciprocally, SAP could benefit from including an understanding of how individual perceptions are embedded in broader cognitive schemes (Johnson et al., 2007), the process by which “actors” and “actorhood” are socially constructed (Hwang and Colyvas, 2011; Meyer, 2008), and the role of social institutions in explaining how practices are maintained and reproduced (Corradi et al., 2010).
In fact, recent trends in both research communities suggest that SAP, which is encouraged to become more macro by analyzing “extra-organizational aggregation” (Whittington, 2006), and NIT, which is encouraged to return to its “micro-cognitive” foundations (Barley, 2008; Hallett and Ventresca, 2006; Suddaby, 2010), may be evolving toward common ground. Hence, it is not surprising that papers trying to combine insights from both perspectives are emerging (see, for example, Helms et al., 2012; Jarzabkowski et al., 2009; Johnson et al., 2010b; Smets et al., 2012). The purpose of this essay, therefore, is to explore and map out the intellectual terrain described by, and potentially shared between, these two perspectives on organizations.
Overview and basic tenets of NIT and SAP
NIT emerged in the late 1970s, as a reaction against views of organizations as rational, responding exclusively to economic pressures for resources. Instead, NIT suggests that much organizational behavior occurs in response to social pressures arising from the symbolic environment created by other organizations. NIT, thus, gained popularity because of its ability to explain organizational behaviors that defy rational economic explanations.
NIT is founded on a few central constructs, which assume that organizations are highly attentive to social and symbolic pressures arising from their institutional environment (Suddaby, 2013). One key construct is the notion of rational myths (Meyer and Rowan, 1977), widely held but unproven assumptions about appropriate behavior in organizations thought to contribute to effective organizational functioning. Organizations often adopt practices not for performance but legitimacy effects; they provide the appearance of economic rationality. In contrast to classic economic theory, NIT sees organizations as responding to socially constructed beliefs about what constitutes efficient and effective organizational behavior. Such rationalized myths of performance are readily adopted and diffuse throughout populations of organizations, regardless of whether they improve performance (Tolbert and Zucker, 1983). Building on the constructs of rational myths and diffusion, DiMaggio and Powell (1983) introduced the concept of isomorphism, noting that, as organizational fields become more structured, organizations within them increasingly converge in structure and process.
Responding to critiques that NIT does not offer an adequate account for managerial agency and strategic choice (Donaldson, 1995) or explain organizational diversity (Deephouse, 1999), contemporary NIT uses the notions of rational myths, diffusion, legitimacy, and isomorphism to explain processes of institutional entrepreneurship (DiMaggio, 1988) and change (Dacin et al., 2002). As a result, modern NIT has fragmented along levels of analysis with growing interest in the role of individual cognition (Bitektine, 2011; Tost, 2011), identity and identification (Glynn, 2008), and emotions (Creed et al., 2010; Voronov and Vince, 2012).
Critics have suggested the rapid expansion of NIT to different research questions, and levels of explanation have moved the theory too far away from phenomenology (Meyer, 2008). Consequently, the theory lacks endogenous explanations for processes of stability and change (Powell and Colyvas, 2008), and is at risk of losing internal coherence (Suddaby, 2010). An emergent theoretical movement termed institutional work (Lawrence et al., 2009; Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006) seeks to ensure coherence by returning to its roots in phenomenology and focusing attention, not on the social structures that are the outcome of institutionalization processes, but rather on the processes themselves. This movement draws heavily from practice theory and supports the main thesis of this article—that SAP and NIT are evolving toward common theoretical and empirical space.
The emergence of SAP can be linked to two related trends in management research. One trend is the turn toward more processual understandings of organization and management (Hernes, 2007), most explicitly advocated by Weick (1979) urging researchers to use verbs or gerunds instead of nouns to acknowledge social phenomena as accomplished through ongoing activities. Accordingly, SAP researchers adopt an activity-based view, emphasizing the doing of strategy by studying micro-activities (Johnson et al., 2003: 1). The second trend is the broader “practice turn” in social science (Schatzki et al., 2001), which emphasizes the wider social context that shapes and is shaped by observable activity. Thus, SAP scholars emphasize that all strategizing activity is based on “regular, socially defined modes of acting that arise from the plural social institutions to which [actors] belong” (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007:6). The approach thus cuts across multiple levels of analysis, aiming to connect the micro-level of individual activities to the meso-level of the organization and the macro-level of the organizational field (Johnson et al., 2007; Whittington, 2006).
In line with the broader practice approach, strategizing is conceptualized as consisting of three interrelated aspects: practices, praxis, and practitioners (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007; Whittington, 2006). Practices refer to the “routinized types of behavior” (Reckwitz, 2002: 249) that actors draw upon in their strategizing activity. This includes various strategy tools and methods (e.g. Spee and Jarzabkowski, 2009) but also more informal mechanisms like rhetoric mobilized in strategy work (e.g. Sillince et al., 2012). As routinized types of behavior, practices transcend individuals and time periods. Praxis is the concrete, unfolding activity as it takes place. While praxis is necessarily unique in that it only exists in the present, it is informed and guided by practices. That is, whenever people act, they draw on some pre-existing, socially defined practices. Practitioners refers to the actors doing the strategy work, recognizing that each has a unique way of interpreting and engaging with work based on their education and experience (e.g. Balogun and Johnson, 2004).
In exploring the different dimensions of strategy work, SAP scholars draw on a wide range of theoretical perspectives. This comprises different strands of practice theory, such as structuration theory (Whittington, 2010), activity theory (Jarzabkowski, 2003), and Bourdieusian (Gomez, 2010) and Foucauldian practice theory (McCabe, 2010), and a host of other theories based in social constructivism like sensemaking (Rouleau, 2005), discourse (Mantere and Vaara, 2008), and ritual theory (Johnson et al., 2010a). Thus, SAP is a theoretically pluralistic or “promiscuous” field (Carter et al., 2008). This pluralism has helped the SAP perspective grow quickly, with multiple special issues (Journal of Management Studies, 2003; Human Relations, 2007; Long Range Planning, 2008; Journal of Management Studies, and British Journal of Management, forthcoming), handbooks (Golsorkhi et al., 2010; Johnson et al., 2007), and a plethora of journal papers.
Points of overlap: where NIT and SAP should meet
Although NIT and SAP are based on somewhat different ontological and epistemological assumptions, they share a common theoretical and empirical pragmatism. They remind researchers that there is often a large gap between how organizations behave and how they explain that behavior. It is the tendency toward pragmatism that asks researchers to attend, not to what organizations say they are doing, or to what economic theories predict they might do, but rather, to what organizations (or managers, employees, or other actors) actually do.
Within this common focus, we identify three key conceptual spaces in which these views of organizations are drifting toward each other. First, as stated above, there are emergent themes in both perspectives that direct attention toward behavioral processes rather than the social-structural outcomes of such processes. Second, both tend to privilege individual-level cognitions and emotions rather than macro-level expectations. Finally, the perspectives emphasize the role of language in constructing organizational reality and creating the symbolic conditions under which practices, both institutional and organizational, can exist. We elaborate how these three themes constitute overlap between NIT and SAP in the following section, beginning with NIT.
Behavior in NIT
A rapidly growing area of research within NIT elaborates the concept of institutional work, focusing attention on the specific behaviors used to create, maintain, and change institutions (Lawrence et al., 2009, 2011; Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006). As part of a broader turn to work in organization theory (Phillips and Lawrence, 2012), the notion of institutional work relaxes two key assumptions of IT—agency and structure.
Institutional work scholars adopt an intermediate position on human agency. Recall that NIT originated as a reaction against the rational actor model in classic economics. NIT argued, instead, that most organizational behavior could be explained by the existence of macro-social structures such as shared cognitions, rational myths, and normative expectations emerging from the institutional environment. Critics, however, observed that NIT had simply replaced the “hyper-muscular agent” with an equally preposterous “cultural dope” (Mutch, 2007) and that neither reflected the empirical reality of how actors engaged with their institutional environment. The notion of institutional work, thus, relaxes neo-institutional assumptions about human reflexivity and agency. Viewing actors as neither cultural puppets nor superhuman agents, institutional work seeks to explore the ways in which reflexive actors negotiate their institutional environment through “intelligent situated action” (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006: 219).
Institutional work also relaxes implicit assumptions about structure. While NIT tends to take for granted the exteriority of social structures (i.e. institutions), institutional work sees institutions as much more contingent structures. This approach takes seriously Berger and Luckmann’s (1966) view of institutions as emergent processes and encourages researchers to attend to the micro-behavior through which institutionalization occurs.
An emerging interest in the behavioral elements of institutions, thus offers a clear point of connection with SAP. Both approaches argue for the need to attend to people and what they actually do, on a habitual or day-to-day basis, in order to understand how macro-organizational structures actually work.
Behavior in SAP
Studies conducted within SAP explicitly focus on what people do. Emphasizing praxis, practices, and practitioners has created a strong tradition of studying behavior. One important focus with obvious relevance for institutional theory is the routinized behavior encapsulated in practices (Reckwitz, 2002). The practices studied by SAP scholars are not generally routinized solely within single organizations but also transcend organizational boundaries; these practices are institutionalized in that they operate across organizations and sometimes fields. Indeed, two of the most studied practices, strategy meetings (Hodgkinson et al., 2006; Hoon, 2007; Jarzabkowski and Seidl, 2008; Johnson et al., 2010a; MacIntosh et al., 2010), and the use of strategy tools (Jarratt and Stiles, 2010; Kaplan, 2011; Moisander and Stenfors, 2009; Spee and Jarzabkowski, 2009; Wright et al., 2013) are so common across organizations that they may be termed institutional practices, individually, and a network of institutional practices, collectively.
Strategy meetings, for instance, have specific elements that make them immediately recognizable as meetings (Schwartzman, 1989). As institutionalized practices, meetings can provide stability in organizations, for instance, stabilizing strategy through recurrence (Jarzabkowski and Seidl, 2008; Johnson et al., 2010a). This stabilization effect means that meetings may play an important role in broader institutionalization processes. Indeed, SAP research in this area has been particularly interested in the effects that meetings have on the internal dynamics of organizations. This includes destabilizing effects (Jarzabkowski and Seidl, 2008) such as challenges to existing strategic orientations (MacIntosh et al., 2010). Meetings might thus be understood as important mechanisms through which institutionalized ideas get picked up by individual organizations—by allowing new ideas to be discussed that challenge the established organizational order—and also as a mechanism through which institutions get stabilized. SAP scholars are only beginning to explore these interconnections. The initial focus on the unique ways in which meetings are enacted in everyday praxis, which usefully demonstrated the impact of context-specific features on organizing dynamics, neglected the macro-effects (Johnson et al., 2007).
Research on strategy tool use has followed a similar path. Strategy tools are by definition formalized ways to structure analysis and guide decision making (Jarratt and Stiles, 2010). Examples include SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis; BCG (Boston Consulting Group) matrix; scenario planning; and PEST (Political, Economic, Social and Technological) analysis (Jarratt and Stiles, 2010; Jarzabkowski et al., 2013; Moisander and Stenfors, 2009). These tools are easily recognizable across organizations and industries; indeed, they have become an accepted part of organizing (Wright et al., 2013). Strategy tools are thus often institutionalized. Studying their evolution offers an important opportunity to better understand institutionalization processes. Considering issues such as who introduced a tool and how it became an accepted practice can shed light on the micro-dynamics underpinning institutional processes. Similarly, the ways in which tools are used differently based on actor and context (cf. Spee and Jarzabkowski, 2009) may help us better understand institutional change. Indeed, SAP studies often suggest that institutions contain more dynamism than traditionally thought because they are underpinned by ongoing micro-activity. For instance, even the most institutionalized strategy tools are contextualized and adapted based on interpretation of the strategic environment (Jarratt and Stiles, 2010). Similarly, Jarzabkowski et al. (2012) and Seidl (2007) illustrate that standardized “off-the-shelf” practices are not easy-to-implement blueprints but rather relatively abstract concepts that must be populated with meanings and performances before they can be used to produce organizing outcomes.
Taken together, these studies have garnered a better understanding of the “micro-level foundations of strategy making and execution” (Paroutis et al., 2013: 3). Uncovering the activity and dynamics that underpin organizing is extremely relevant if we seek to better understand the foundations of institutions. Indeed, the first practice-based studies of institutions are illuminating “how institutions are created, maintained and disrupted through the actions, interactions and negotiations of multiple actors” (Jarzabkowski et al., 2009: 284). Like NIT, SAP recognizes the power of nuance. However, rather than solely seeking examples of institutional practices or mechanisms that can illuminate institutions, SAP goes one step further by providing fine-grained views of organizations that study concrete elements of practice which constitute organizing. This enables better understanding of the micro-dynamics and the effects of these on the stability and instability of institutions (and vice versa).
Cognition in NIT
Another emerging area within NIT that connects meaningfully with analogous work by practice theorists is the emphasis placed on human cognition in core practices that underpin institutions. Cognition has always played a powerful role in NIT. Scott (1995), for example, identifies cognition as one of three key pillars of institutional thought. Similarly, cognition underpins the concept of institutional logics (Friedland and Alford, 1991), which has had a pervasive influence in IT.
A stream of theoretical and empirical work has attempted to connect the cognitive elements of institutional concepts, particularly legitimacy, to human practices of subjective decision making and human interpretation. So, for example, Bitektine (2011) has constructed a framework that explains how social judgments are made by organizations regarding legitimacy, reputation, and status. Tost (2011) has built a comparable model of individual legitimacy judgment.
A similar branch of research applies notions of sensemaking (Weick, 1995) to institutional processes of categorization. Thus, George et al. (2006) use institutional assumptions of cognition to understand how organizations characterize their institutional environments as generating legitimacy threats or opportunities. Weber and Glynn (2006), similarly, argue that cultural-cognitive institutions play an important, but still unarticulated, role in processes of sensemaking.
A related cluster of research studies emotions in institutional processes. The idea that institutions gain cogency because of their moral or emotional content is well established in traditional institutionalism. Selznick (1957) spoke of “character” and “morality” as critical components of organizational institutionalization. Similarly, Goffman (1961) wrote of the demoralizing affect of “total” institutions. One group of neo-institutionalists has reintroduced an interest in understanding the affective component of institutions and processes of institutionalization. Creed et al. (2010), for example, analyze the emotional component produced by contradictions inherent in organizational institutions. Voronov and Vince (2012) similarly show how emotional investment in an institutional project may be a critical component of all institutional work.
These theoretical frameworks and empirical studies share a common perspective in viewing institutions not as exterior and reified social structures, but rather as collective interpretations, shared meaning systems, and ongoing processes of collective sensemaking. That is, they adopt a phenomenological view of institutions. As such, these approaches incorporate a practice perspective in which institutions are understood as shared meaning structures that result from collective cognitions or shared understandings of the world.
Cognition in SAP
Cognition has also been a focus of SAP work. Like institutional theorists, SAP researchers have sought to better understand social meaning-making processes like sensemaking, particularly during organizational change (Balogun and Johnson, 2004, 2005; Rouleau, 2005; Rouleau and Balogun, 2011). This work has demonstrated the important role of cognitive frames in dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty (Balogun and Johnson, 2004; Kaplan, 2008) and has shown how shared meaning emerges in the everyday praxis of managers (Balogun and Johnson, 2004, 2005). Cognitive frames, of course, are shaped by institutions and have the potential to alter institutions. This offers a logical connection to the institution literature. However, while NIT focuses on the macro-elements, SAP illuminates the micro-foundations. For instance, Balogun and Johnson (2004) show how schemata evolved via a complex process of interaction between actors as they tried to coordinate a task. Their interpretations of the task and what constituted relevant actions were guided by their experience of others’ behavior; this behavior provided feedback on the new structure and its appropriateness. Framing practices may also be intentional or political (Kaplan, 2008; Rouleau, 2005). These practices and how they become recognized and institutionalized as schemata, acting both as constraint and resource, help to illuminate the origins of institutional logics and indeed institutions in everyday praxis.
Recent studies in SAP suggest that one important reference point for meaning-making is emotion (Brundin and Melin, 2012; Liu and Maitlis, in press; Samra-Fredericks, 2004). This emerging set of studies demonstrates that emotional dynamics drive organizational processes by influencing interpretation. This is a particularly promising avenue for research (Huy, 2012). For instance, Liu and Maitlis (in press) show that displayed emotions affects strategizing by influencing which issues are discussed and which decisions made (see also Samra-Fredericks, 2004). Furthermore, if emotional displays are deemed unauthentic, this may undermine support (Brundin and Melin, 2012). SAP thus again highlights the importance of everyday activity in creating aggregate emotions and categories, which may become institutionalized into practice via recognizable patterns, for example, appropriate emotional displays at work (Liu and Maitlis, in press).
These collective studies give importance to the study of micro-practices in meaning generation. This has implications for the study of institutional actors and their interaction, where issues of sensemaking and emotion are equally important. In particular, these approaches illuminate the unique ways in which actors draw on institutional frames and logics, and links to the idea of “accounts” surfacing within that literature (Strang and Meyer, 1993; Zilber, 2002, 2009). Critically, it demonstrates the importance of the dynamic; not just specific factors that impact the outcome, but the interplay between them.
Language in NIT
A final area in which NIT draws on practice examines the intimate relationship between institutions and language. Drawing from linguistic philosophy, ranging from Wittgenstein’s (1953) “language games” to Searle’s (1969) “speech acts,” NIT researchers share assumptions based in practice theory. Foremost, they assume that language or discourse is an everyday practice that goes beyond merely reflecting reality. That is, language is constitutive of rules, knowledge structures, and, ultimately, social institutions. This branch of NIT assumes that speech acts are inherently material inasmuch as certain types of language—for example, declarations of war or marriage—hold powerful implications for action.
Research has thus been devoted to understanding the use of language to construct legitimacy. Suddaby and Greenwood (2005), for example, delineate a series of rhetorical strategies used to legitimate or contest a proposed new organizational form. Maguire and Hardy (2009) analyze how language was used strategically to abandon previously taken-for-granted practices regarding the use of the insecticide DDT. These studies are part of a long stream of empirical analyses in organization theory that reveals a powerful connection between language (narrative, rhetoric, and discourse) and the institutionalization of legitimacy (i.e. Elsbach and Sutton, 1992; Maguire and Hardy, 2006; Shepard and Zacharakis, 2003; Vaara et al., 2006).
Other research focuses on the use of language to encourage the diffusion of highly institutionalized practices (Green, 2004; Kennedy and Fiss, 2009), the creation of new institutional categories (Aldrich and Fiol, 1994; Rao et al., 2005), and processes of institutional work and change (Zilber, 2006).
Language in SAP
SAP has always taken a particular interest in the role of communication. In one of the seminal SAP papers, Hendry (2000) went as far as arguing that strategy is a “discursive practice.” Others speak of a distinctive stream within SAP labeled “strategy as discourse” (Langley and Abdallah, 2011). In order to study the communicative dimension of SAP, researchers have drawn on a wide range of different linguistic approaches such as Critical and Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (Ezzamel and Willmott, 2008; Vaara, 2010a), Conversation Analysis (Samra-Fredericks, 2003), Narrative Analysis (De La Ville and Mounoud, 2010), and Rhetorical Analysis (Jarzabkowski and Sillince, 2007). Thereby, they have examined many aspects of strategy communication. For instance, there is significant work interested in the power effects of strategy discourse (Knights and Morgan, 1991; Mantere and Vaara, 2008), showing how it might empower some while disempowering others. Further researchers have studied the effects of different rhetorical moves on strategic direction (Samra-Fredericks, 2003), on multiple strategic goals (Jarzabkowski and Sillince, 2007) and on strategic action (Sillince et al., 2012). Other work has examined the specific role of texts and textual objects in strategizing work (Maitlis and Lawrence, 2003; Vaara et al., 2010). A final set of work has looked at ways in which generic strategy concepts have been adopted in organizational communications and translated into specific organizational contexts (Paroutis and Heracleous, 2013; Seidl, 2007). This work makes explicit links to research on institutional adoption processes.
While most SAP research examining the role of language in strategy work has focused on communication inside the organizations, there is almost always a latent link to the societal or institutional level. For instance, most discursive practices examined are common across organizations, rather than being organization specific. Thus, some papers explicitly link to the societal level (e.g. Mantere and Vaara, 2008; Paroutis and Heracleous, 2013; Seidl, 2007). Indeed, Vaara (2010b) and Langley and Abdallah (2011) stress that the discourse lens is particularly fruitful for strategy research as it facilitates studies of the relation between different levels of analysis (micro-meso-macro) through “inter-discursivity”.
SAP research on the role of language has the potential to enrich the corresponding research in NIT by demonstrating the broad-reaching impact of micro-linguistic practices. It also shows the “real effect” of language by tracing its influence on organizational outcomes. Beyond that, SAP research reflects the broader theme of power in NIT, thereby further illuminating the link between the micro- and meso-levels.
Discussion and conclusion
Our essay outlines and elaborates three areas of overlap between SAP and NIT—a focus on what actors actually do, their shared cognitions, and the role of language in creating shared meanings. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these activities represent the building blocks of Berger and Luckmann’s (1966) description of how reality is socially constructed. This common ground means that the two perspectives are well placed to inform each other, and that together they offer significant learning for organization studies more broadly.
For instance, SAP can look to NIT for inspiration on how to draw conclusions about the influence of the macro-environment on the micro-level of individual actions. NIT scholars are skilled at linking to macro-institutional elements, showing how the macro-environment shapes organizations and organizational fields. SAP is only just entering this territory and researchers are thus not as skilled at developing these connections. Thus, rather than explaining, many SAP studies fall into the “descriptive trap”, offering detailed micro-ethnographies that are almost too contextualized for the reader to appreciate the far-reaching insights they can produce. It is the focus on big questions that SAP can glean from NIT. NIT skillfully demonstrates that organizational issues are shaped by broader social factors—not organization-specific factors, but trans-organizational factors with significant reach. NIT puts less emphasis on the concrete examples or practices that are studied, instead focusing on the institutional mechanisms that these illuminate. The purpose is always grander. While the focus on social and political forces is of course not unique to NIT, it is quite pronounced in NIT and could benefit SAP theorizing.
SAP can learn how to build more coherent research streams from NIT. With the exception of a few specialist areas—including those reviewed above—SAP has experienced a “coherence problem” that has made it difficult to build cumulative knowledge about specific areas. NIT has been exceptionally skilled at carving out rich streams for contribution such as institutional work. SAP research streams are broad, divergent, and less focused. Often, these streams are less readily identifiable than in NIT.
Conversely, NIT has much to learn from SAP. SAP teaches NIT that sometimes it is a specific behavior, cognition, or emotion that matters; there is no grander theme. SAP reminds scholars that the little things do matter and that it is exactly the unique specificities or micro-alterations that practitioners engage in through their everyday praxis that can produce cracks in the foundation of an institution and begin to shift what was once taken for granted.
NIT scholars could benefit from attending to the impressive datasets and extensive micro-ethnographies amassed by SAP scholars. If there is a question worth asking about micro-activity in organizations, someone in the SAP community probably already has the data. Not many communities, but particularly not NIT, have this depth of data. NIT can learn much from SAP about quality of data. Indeed, SAP scholars can really speak about organizational life, drawing on a vast array of actors and activities, and illustrating powerful linkages between them. SAP scholars are less tied to established theoretical notions, and thus engage in more fluid, dynamic, and “risqué” theorizing than NIT has been able to for some time. It is this freedom and creativity that NIT might reintroduce to institution theory.
These differences are significant enough that, for now, NIT and SAP will remain two separate streams of research with occasional intersections. However, much is to be gained from either approach. Indeed, an overarching element of the union between NIT and SAP is a renewed appreciation that the central objects of our research—institutions and organizations—are social constructions.
By reaffirming the socially constructed nature of our core objects of inquiry, we see two key directions for new research that combines SAP and NIT. First, researchers will be encouraged to relax their core assumptions about the reified nature of organizations and institutions. Traditional management research has tended to treat these constructs as “things” that are exterior to, and often control, the individuals that create and populate them. A combined NIT/SAP perspective will encourage researchers to think of organizations and institutions not as enduring formal objective structures detached from the actors who authored them, but rather as contingent outcomes of ongoing interactions and inter-subjective interpretations of the individuals and social groups through which they are constituted. One key outcome of this new perspective, therefore, is that management researchers need to re-theorize firms and institutions.
A second new direction for research that combines SAP and NIT will be to re-theorize our understandings of actors and agency. Not only are social structures reified within traditional management theory, so too are social actors. One version of a reified actor is the hyper-muscular and hyper-rational agent. Top management teams, effective leaders, and institutional entrepreneurs all fall into this ideal type in which actors demonstrate superhuman awareness of the social, cultural, and economic constraints that surround them and are able to make effective choices that improve the efficiency, survivability, or adaptability of the firm or institution. An alternate and equally unrealistic reified actor is the organizational or institutional “dope” who lacks both the reflexivity and agency of the former type and is therefore subject to the power of the social structures in which he or she is embedded. A combined NIT/SAP perspective will offer a more nuanced view of actors and agency, in which actors have a limited degree of reflexivity about their relationship with the social structures that they have constructed and a relative degree of capacity to change them.
So, for example, one interesting path for applying this combined perspective would be to re-theorize the modern corporation. Rather than taking for granted the traditional understanding that the corporation is a rational structure designed to “maximize shareholder value,” researchers might, instead, spend some time inside these organizations and attend to what the lived experience is inside a corporation—that is, pay attention to what individuals inside corporations actually do. Yes, they attend meetings, generate reports, and draft strategic plans. But corporations also provide the institutional context within which individuals fall in love, engage in status competitions, and reconstruct their personal identities. Corporations engage in a wide range of activities that have little to do with their economic mandate. They collect art, commission histories, construct museums, have internal police forces, and even universities. We could, therefore, re-theorize the corporation not from its presumed functional purpose in the economy but rather from the perspective of the individuals who reside within it and, simultaneously, define it from the perspective of their lived experience.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.