Polysemy and plural institutional logics

ABSTRACT

A growing number of organizations are hybrid organizations with ambiguous goals subjected to plural institutional logics. Many culture financiers not only need to handle an institutional logic of market and the democratic state, but also fulfill expectations from different fields of cultural production. This single case study on Swedish public sector financiers of art and culture focuses on the self-proclaimed most important target for such financing, namely to promote artistic quality. The article shows that plural institutional logics are instantiated in the main target of cultural financing. This in turn makes the target ambiguous and gives rise to several interpretations. The article introduces the concept of polysemy to the literature on institutional logics. It argues that one way of managing the contradictory expectations that arise from plural institutional logics is through polysemous targets; that is, by stating targets in words with multiple meaning in a semantic system.

KEYWORDS:

• Institutional logics
• polysemy
• financing of arts and culture
• cultural production

In search for meaning

How do actors deal with conflicting targets through language use in fields with high institutional complexity? In a workshop about artistic quality hosted by the Swedish Arts Council in November 2016, a civil servant presented different views collected from his colleagues on what artistic quality means. Actors defined the concepts in different ways and put emphasis on different meanings of this concept. Some of the answers were: ‘artistic quality is when the viewer is emotionally touched despite intellectual objections,’ ‘artistic quality is when the viewer carries the artistic experience with him or her for a long period of time,’ ‘artistic quality is when the viewer reluctantly changes position,’ ‘artistic quality evokes curiosity and empathy,’ ‘equal opportunity and diversity contributes to artistic quality’ and ‘artistic quality must always be specified in relation to its art form, context, time and space.’ Interestingly, decision-makers considered artistic quality the most important target, while also being the hardest target not only to measure but also to define in the first place.

This study focus on the institutional vocabularies in organizations subjected to plural institutional logics. To foreshadow the conclusion of this study, it adds to the theory of institutional logics by introducing the concept of polysemous targets. In contrast to studies of rhetorical strategies that shift institutional logics or bring out new organizational forms (e.g. Suddaby and Greenwood 2005) this study offers a case of when the language use of polysemy, that is, words with multiple meaning, rather functions as a way to conserve the organizational form of a hybrid organization (Battilana and Dorado 2010) and sustain the plural institutional logics in that organization. It does so by analyzing the use of the concept of artistic quality in Swedish public financiers of the arts, which is a prime example of a target with manifold meanings.

The phenomenon that this article set out to study is hence the language use related to the concept of artistic quality in the Swedish public sector. The study has an abductive approach and studied both empirically how actors understood and co-constructed the concept of artistic quality in their everyday life, and examined the theoretical underpinnings of the concept expressed in sociological and philosophical literature which seemed influential in their organizational field. The theory of institutional logics was used as a theoretical lens to analyze and interpret the diverse and shifting meanings of this concept both expressed by interviewees in the study and the previous research on artistic quality in the specific research context. These data was compared to ideal types of logics in extant literature in a technique that can be described as ‘pattern matching’ (Reay and Jones 2016). The research question (namely how actors deal with conflicting targets through language use in organizational fields with high institutional complexity) emerged in the research process when constantly comparing data to previous literature.

Theoretical foundations

In the outset of the study, it was clear that Swedish public financiers of the arts incorporate several potentially conflicting institutional logics and could hence be referred to as what Battilana and Dorado (2010) denote ‘hybrid organizations’. Previous research has shown that in cases of organizational fields containing multiple institutional logics, one institutional logic may come to replace another (e.g. Hoffman 1999; Scott et al. 2000; Greenwood, Suddaby, and Hinings 2002; Kitchener 2002; Hensmans 2003; Rao, Monin, and Durand 2003, 2005; Thornton, Jones, and Kury 2005; Lounsbury 2007). However, this is not the only possible outcome. Studies have shown that institutional logics can be reconciled and co-exist, both in organizational fields (e.g. Reay and Hinings 2009) and in organizations (e.g. Cooper et al. 1996; Zilber 2002; Battilana and Dorado 2010; Pache and Santos 2013). Co-existing logics can either be a temporary (i.e. Hoffman 1999; Hensmans 2003) or a more prolonged phenomenon in an organizational field (i.e. Reay and Hinings 2009). Moreover, although a change of institutional logics may be perceived on a field level, a closer investigation may reveal that individuals appear to accept a new institutional logic whilst they in practice continue to act in accordance with the old one (Towley 2002; Khan, Munir, and Willmott 2007).

There has been a debate in the field of institutional logics whether researchers should only denote fundamental organizing principles in society, such as the market, the state, the profession, and religion, or also denote minor organizing principles, for example differences between the new and the old French kitchen, as different institutional logics (Thornton 2004; Thornton, Ocasio, and Lounsbury 2012). This study presupposed that institutional logics should denote fundamental organizing principles in society.

The institutional logics of the state, the market and the profession that are the most relevant to this study are well-documented and detailed in previous research (i.e. Thornton 2004; Thornton, Ocasio, and Lounsbury 2012), see Table 1 for a summary.

Table 1. Ideal types of the state, the market and the profession, adapted from Thornton, Ocasio, and Lounsbury (2012, 73).

	Institutional logic of the state	Institutional logic of the market	Institutional logic of the profession
1. Root metaphor	State as redistribution mechanism	Transaction	Profession as relational network
2. Sources of legitimacy	Democratic participation	Share price	Personal expertise
3. Sources of authority	Bureaucratic domination	Shareholder activism	Professional association
4. Sources of identity	Social and economic class	Faceless	Association with quality of craft Personal reputation
5. Basis of norms	Citizenship in nation	Self-interest	Membership in guild and association
6. Basis of attention	Status of interest groups	Status in market	Status in profession
7. Basis of strategy	Increase community good	Increase efficiency profit	Increase personal reputation
8. Informal control mechanism	Backroom politics	Industry analysts	Celebrity professionals
9. Economic system	Welfare capitalism	Market capitalism	Personal capitalism

These institutional logics are to be understood as Weberian ideal types. Indeed, there are vast differences between the American, Chinese, North Korean or the Swedish states, between stock markets and flea markets, and between art professions and strong professions such as medical doctors, accountants and lawyers. There are, in addition, also differences between state logics in neighboring Swedish municipalities and between the markets and professions for different art forms, and even between niches within art forms. Nevertheless, these ideal types are useful for distinguishing differences between vocabularies, organizational attention, justifications, positions and motives among actors.

Conflicting institutional logics can be handled by separating institutional logics into different offices at different geographical sites (Lounsbury 2007). Hybrid organizations may use selective coupling to reconcile the institutional logics (Pache and Santos 2013) and plural institutional logics may blend in ‘sediments,’ where one archetype of an organization is layered on another archetype (Cooper et al. 1996). Inter-organizational collaboration is sometimes seen as a mechanism for institutional change (Gray 2000; Phillips, Lawrence, and Hardy 2000; Lawrence, Hardy, and Phillips 2002; Reay and Hinings 2009). Jay (2013) interestingly noted that hybrid organizations subjected to plural and contradictory institutional logics always face paradoxical outcomes, in so far that what is seen as a success by one institutional logic is seen as a failure from the viewpoint of a conflicting institutional logic, and vice versa.

The body of literature on institutional logics has at least two streams where language use is central. First, there are studies on categorization and classification (i.e. Haveman and Rao 1997; Mohr and Duquenne 1997; Ruef 1999; Ocasio and Joseph 2005). Second, there are studies that link institutional logics to organizational attention (Ocasio 1995; Thornton 2002, 2004; Glynn and Lounsbury 2005; Lounsbury 2007). The first set of studies emphasizes the role of categories as socially constructed basic cognitive units, whilst the second set shows that decision-makers focus their attention on issues that are consistent with prevailing institutional logics.

The study on meanings is both new and old in institutional theory (Zilber 2008). As this field of research rests on a social constructionist philosophy of science, institutions are constructed in processes of externalization, objectivation and internalization (Berger and Luckmann 1967). Language is hence the most important lens through which social reality is shaped. Social constructivist researchers need to attend to meaning not as something ‘out there’ in an externalized world, but as the interpretations, understandings and shared beliefs (re-)produced in social interaction, while giving special attention to power relations and political negotiations.

Already from the early formulations of neo-institutional theory in the 1970s, there was an emphasis on shared meanings, culture and myths (Zilber 2008). Meyer and Rowan’s (1977) conception of ‘rationalized myths’ is a prominent example. They acknowledge ‘organizational language’ to be a most important aspect: ‘Vocabularies of structure which are isomorphic with institutional rules provide prudent, rational, and legitimate accounts. Organizations described in legitimated vocabularies are assumed to be oriented to collectively defined, and often collectively mandated, ends’ (Meyer and Rowan 1977, 349). Jackall (1988, 137) similarly noted

The higher one goes in the corporate world, the more essential is the mastery of provisional language. In fact, advancement beyond the upper-levels depends greatly on one’s ability to manipulate a whole variety of symbols without becoming tied to or identified with any of them.

The study on meaning in neo-institutional theory bears many similarities to the study of polysemy and language use in this study. Although framed in different concepts and with a slightly different aim, studies of this sort point to the importance of meaning as a social construct that is continuously negotiated and interpreted. Fliegstein (1997) for instance showed that institutional entrepreneurs motivate collaborations with other actors by providing them with common meaning and identities. Czarniawska (2000) demonstrated how budgets and plans were translated to different audiences: politicians, engineers, management, subordinates, media, and so on. Meaning is not to be understood as confined to texts or talk, but also involve the process of giving meaning to material objects, as shown by Munir and Phillips (2005) study on how Kodak strived to change the depiction of photography to advance its new technology. Zilber (2002, 250) concludes that ‘actions and meanings are interrelated yet distinct’ and that their interplay between them must be studied to understand the dialectics of institutional change. Lounsbury (2007) show how mutual funds have defined success differently, either as ‘wealth preservation’ or ‘performance’.

Not only institutional theory but also social sciences in general have taken a ‘linguistic turn.’ A common trait among the linguistically focused organizational theorists is the skepticism or even outward rejection of language as a mirror-like representation of reality. On one extreme, discourse analysis focuses on language use and treats empirical data of all sorts as text, while holding the ideal that the text should not represent anything but the text. This approach attends to detail, records and accounts for the text in rigorous ways and is in a way ‘hyper-empirical.’ On another extreme, scientists can engage in ‘grounded fictionalism,’ which argues that all texts are literary accomplishments, and that empirical studies only exist as a literary genre. Because it rejects language use as a representation of empirical realities, it favors playfulness and imagination and makes no claim that the text represents empirical reality. Deconstruction and imaginative speculation are central to these postmodernist researchers, and their works seek to critique and construct new theoretical ideas instead of making factual claims concerned with validity and reliability (Alvesson and Kärreman 2000). Czarniawska (1999, 2007) similarly argues that one literary genre especially suitable for comparisons with scientific inquiry in social sciences is the genre of the detective story.

Moreover, language use is situation-dependent and complex insofar as one cannot compare or aggregate meanings in different contexts:

Terms such as leader, decentralization, hierarchy, strategic, motives, participation, decision, and so on do not have abstract, context-free meanings. The leader, for example, may write memos, listen, yell, give and take advice, and underscore norms. The leader may be a Girl Scout senior, an SS officer, Mahatma Gandhi, or a middle-level bureaucrat. (Alvesson and Kärreman 2000, 142).

Language, and more specifically language use, is highly context-dependent. Swedberg (2005, 3) similarily paraphrases Weber, who made this point long before the linguistic turn in social sciences:

When the wood cutter brings down his axe on the wood, it can be a case of wage labor, provision for one’s household, or a form of recreation, and which one it is depends on the meaning with which the action is invested.

In her book Transforming Knowledge, Minnich (1990) criticized academic institutions for using faulty but value-freighted concepts. The root problem, she argues, is that language use divides human beings into different ontological and epistemological ‘kinds,’ and then treats one kind as the ideal or prototype for all kinds, thereby excluding all others. Certain words, like ‘Man’, appears to be abstractly universal, even though it takes one minority of humans and make them the norm (Minnich 1990). Needless to say, words can have multiple meanings, and can be purposefully used in order to frame and shape reality. Equally important, as Berger and Luckmann (1967) pointed out, is that institutions and hence our perception of reality, is built upon language.

In the institutional logics theory, there are studies that call for more studies on persuasive language and rhetorical strategies (Oakes, Townley, and Cooper 1998; Suddaby and Greenwood 2005; Covalski, Dirsmith, and Rittenberg 2003). One key assertion in these studies are skillful use of language is central to drive institutional change. None of these studies however discuss polysemous words and language use.

Method

Despite the longstanding interest in meanings in institutional theory, and the linguistic turn more generally in social sciences, there are practically no studies that have analyzed how plural institutional logics may be instantiated in polysemous targets; that is, with words that have multiple meaning in a semantic system.

On one hand, the theory of institutional logics strongly acknowledge and emphasize the role of language and semiotics. On the other hand, it seldom analyzes the potential multiple or contradictory meanings of central words and concept among actors. Researchers who use pattern deducing techniques (Reay and Jones 2016) for instance heavily rely on word frequencies and their occurrences, co-occurrences and non-occurrences to determine their centrality but typically focus more on words’ forms than meanings. The promise of the study on polysemy, and the relation of words and their meanings more generally, is to deepen our interpretation of institutional logics; making it more dynamic and less ‘flat’. The wordings of targets and central concepts are particularly interesting to study with this semantic approach due to their action-oriented nature. These words does not only shape the views of actors but also guide their actions.

I have only found one study, a dissertation by Gümüsay (2016), which in chapter 4 discusses institutional logics in an Islamic Bank in relation to the concepts of polyphony and polysemy. This is an unfortunate lacuna given the large number of organizations with vague or multifaceted targets open to interpretation. Many, if not most, vision statements entail value-freighted concepts. The study of polysemous targets is in addition likely to become more important as more organization are put under pressure from plural, and not single, institutional logics. Moreover, it is likely to become more important as organizations move from single-dimensional to multi-dimensional targets and from single financial metrics to multiple nonfinancial metrics (cf. Kaplan and Norton 1992).

Neo-institutional theory ‘seeks to grasp not the universal laws that generate social practice, but the social practices that generate universal laws’ (Dobbins 1994, 123). This has guided the design of the study to not initially ascribe a fixed meaning to the word artistic quality, but instead ask the informants how they interpreted and used this concept; that is, to have an emic rather than etic approach (Pike 1967).

In this study, culture civil servants working for the state, regional councils and municipalities in the Stockholm region, as well as culture producers who are fully or partially funded by public financing, were interviewed about their conception of artistic quality. During 2015–2016, 44 formal interviews were carried out, transcribed in full, translated and analyzed. The interviews were semi-structured and the same interview template was used for all interviews. This template included questions about when they are subjected to the target to promote artistic quality, how important this target is in relation to other targets, what they think artistic quality is, if different groups generally interpret this target differently, if there are any historical differences as to how artistic quality has been interpreted, if this target should be evaluated with quantitative and/or qualitative measures, and more. The interviews lasted 60–120 min. The informants were chosen on the basis that they had either reviewed artistic quality in their occupational role or were culture producers who had applied for public financing. They represented different hierarchical levels: administrators, chief administrators and heads of government authorities. In addition, during 2016–2017 participant observations were carried out at 15 presentations and events on artistic quality, which enabled many occasions for informal small talk with decision-makers in the public sector. These events were primarily hosted by a network organization consisting of civil servants in the Stockholm region. Other events were organized by publicly funded theater and handcraft organizations, an organization for cultural entrepreneurs and a cultural administration outside Stockholm. Supplementary data sources include formal documents about public financing of cultural production, official reports from the government, secondary literature and journalistic articles. The author of this study has translated all the Swedish texts cited in this study, both interview transcripts and references published in Swedish.

Researchers often have difficulties ‘balancing between conceptual and empirical planes. In other words, all researchers struggle with deciding when they should be true to their theory and when they should be true to their data.’ (Van Maanen, Sørensen, and Mitchell 2007, 1147) This article develops theory through an abductive approach (Peirce 1995/1903; Alvesson and Sköldberg 2000; Alvesson and Kärreman 2007; Lock, Golden-Biddle, and Feldman 2008). The study started with one broader research interest (how organizations handle plural institutional logics) as well as an empirical setting that seemed to offer a high degree of institutional complexity. The research question was then narrowed down to investigate how actors deal with conflicting targets through language use in organizational fields with high institutional complexity. The study did not start with a given hypothesis, which could be approached deductively, nor with an assumption on how many and which institutional logics would be the most appropriate theoretical conceptualization for the study. The theoretical framework was formed in an interplay between empirical observations and theoretical investigations. The interest in language use, and later polysemy, developed throughout the course of the study in an interplay between empirical observations and ‘armchair theorizing.’

To gain an understanding of how the concept of artistic quality relates to previous literature on artistic value I continuously read literature from various theoretical backgrounds on this subject matter. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of such literary review, and the absence of a tight conceptual framework of this literature, I did not carry out a systematic review. My intention was instead to gain an orientation about what literature has been influential in the local organizational field under study. In the research process I took notes if somebody referenced a certain written work and made sure to read it. It could for example be classics in for example philosophy and sociology, contemporary work on artistic quality in the particular Swedish context or governmental documents. In contemporary work, I went back and looked at the references of these work to get an understanding of what older works seemed the most influential in this local context. In the next part of the article, I will present a condensed version of this literary review.

The collected data from the interviews was analyzed in respect to previous research on institutional logics. It was done by two researchers, the author of the paper and a research assistant, and the results were triangulated, compared and discussed. The collected data was hence analyzed in relation to the institutional logics framework provided by Thornton, Ocasio, and Lounsbury (2012) and concluded that three such institutional logics are the most relevant: the institutional logic of the state, the market and the (art) professions.

More specifically, the coding theme especially focused on sources of legitimacy, authority, identity; basis of norms, attention and strategy; as well as informal control mechanisms. Furthermore, we added codes related to discussions on interpretative prerogatives, types of values, and different views of culture’s role in society. These codes were primarily derived from what had been written on artistic quality before in the Swedish context. Finally, we paid extra attention to some emerging and related themes such as professions, bureaucracy, interest groups and community good.

In the same processes of analysis and coding, the different understandings of artistic quality were traced and grouped in relation to these logics. We sought to identify patterns, similarities and differences by grouping the data from the interviews in relation to the municipalities size, economic status and how segregated they were. We also investigated differences between different kinds of cultural production, hierarchical level and gender of the interviewee. While we noted some differences (culture for children tended to a higher extent be motivated by an institutional logic of the state compared to culture for adults; the culture sponsored at a state level was slightly more motivated by an institutional logic of the (arts) professions compared to municipalities, etc.) it was generally the case that interviewees had different meanings of artistic quality regardless of their workplace, gender and profession. Even though these characteristics were not important to the analysis of the data, such characteristics have been presented in the empirical sector in order to help the reader see the variety of interviewees. For practical reasons, the study was limited to the Stockholm region, and all the municipalities included in the study have regular assembly meetings, and most have professional networks between different financiers on municipal, regional and state level. The results of our data analysis illustrated how the plural institutional logics are instantiated in the target to promote artistic quality.

There are several limitations to the study. First, it has a theory-generating and not a theory-testing study design. Future research is encouraged to quantitatively test the conclusions of this study, and for instance study to what extent certain standpoints are held by Swedish civil servants. Second, countries and regions differ greatly in terms of how the public sector finance and organize cultural production. For practical reasons, this study is limited to the Stockholm region, that despite being the most densely populated region in Sweden only covers a minority of all people living in Sweden, and it cannot be ruled out that other regions are organized quite differently. Third, this study has particularly focused on the concept of artistic quality as a polysemous wording, and has not to the same extent studied how other fundamental concepts – such as the public sector, the market, and the arts professions – could have polysemous properties, which potentially also could be interesting to study.

The case: artistic quality as a target in Swedish public-sector organizations

How can the concept of artistic quality be understood from previous literature?

There is a vast body of literature from many streams of research that brings different theoretical foundations for the sociology of the quality and value of art. Interestingly, philosophers played a crucial role for the development of an institutional theory of art and a sociological approach on how to judge the quality of an artwork. Danto (1964) made use of Andy Warhol’s Brillo boxes to conclude that in order for something to be seen as art, it must be infused by ‘a theory of art’. Contrary to for example Marcel Duchamp, who believed that artists are the ones that decide what art is, Danto instead argued that whatever the collective of the artworld considered to be art was art. Dickie (1971) introduced the concept of institutions and discussed, along with for example sociologist Becker (1982), the value and quality of art in relation to social networks and cooperative activity in the art world, instead of relating it to ‘a theory of art’. A common approach among economists and management researchers to discuss the quality and value of art is to relate it to pricing. Olav Velthuis’ reviews (2003, 2005) of this research shows that there are at least two dominant perspectives: the hostile worlds perspective and the nothing but perspective, which rests on very different assumptions about the commensurability of economic value and cultural value (i.e. artistic quality). The hostile worlds perspective assumes that economic value and artistic quality are either separated into different domains, not necessarily being connected to each other, or ‘contaminated’ as in the case of the Frankfurter Schule, where it is believed that the mere act of pricing of art fules alienation, degrades the art, and protects the capitalist system. The nothing but perspective, instead argues that there is nothing but economic value, and that artistic value, social standing, or other non-economic values are all subsets of the economic value. Although the cultural value of artworks and cultural production has been thoroughly discussed and analyzed in management research, not the least by Pierre Bourdieu and his many followers, little attention has been given the role public financiers of the arts and their views on the different values embedded in cultural production.

The concept of ‘artistic quality’ has had a long standing in the history of Swedish cultural politics. In 1996, the national target for cultural financing from the Department of Culture read: ‘To promote cultural diversity, artistic renewal and quality and thereby counteract the negative consequences of commercialism.’ (Government Bill 1996/97:3, 27) In the cultural proposition from 2009, the government stated that: ‘Culture shall be a dynamic, challenging and independent force with freedom of expression as the basis. Everyone should have equal opportunity to participate in cultural life. Creativity, diversity and artistic quality shall characterize the development of society.’ (Government Bill 2009/10:3, 26) In this process, the aim to counteract the negative consequences of commercialism was removed, as commercial success and artistic quality did not necessary stand in opposition. Relating to Velthuis (2003, 2005), we understand that the Swedish left-wing governments had a hostile worlds perspective, arguing that culture should counteract the negative effects of commercialism, that was shifted to more of a nothing but perspective when a right-wing government took office.

This concept is hence an institutionalized part of the formalized schemes established as guidelines for public financing of the arts. While often cherished, the concept has been under scrutiny by people that call for a problematization of the concept of artistic quality. In the Official Reports of the Swedish Government (2006, 42) Vanja Hermele for example questions whether artistic quality is a (gender-)neutral concept. Applying Minnich’s (1990) notion of ‘mystified concepts’ to performing arts in Sweden, she writes:

An undefined concept, as quality, is a mystified concept. Mystified concepts suffer from unspoken norms and ideals. The key words here are unspoken norms and ideals. Mystified concepts are notions that hold out the prospect of being neutral in spite of being characterized by ideology. (Official Reports of the Swedish Government 2006, 42, 445)

Therefore, she calls for an explication of artistic quality that could demystify the concept. Similarly, interviewees in the study has said that some argue that it is impossible to say what artistic quality is in our time, since it is only possible to tell afterwards when history has had its course.

Artistic quality is furthermore a target that is often interpreted as vague. Just like words such as peace, freedom, honor and glory, it can be construed as a ‘glittering generality’; that is, a concept associated with highly valued beliefs without supporting information or reason (Institute for Propaganda Analysis 1938). Because it has no agreed upon meaning it can similarly be seen as a ‘floating signifier’; that is, a signifier without referents, as the concept does not point to any actual object or agreed upon definition (Mehlman 1972). The conceptualization of this concept as vague, empty or essentially meaningless, however, is distinctly different from the conceptualization of the concept as carrying multiple meanings. In the Merriam-Webster dictionary, no less than eight different meanings are attached to the word ‘quality’ (Merriam-Webster 2017). It may among other things refer to either a peculiar or essential character, or a degree of excellence. In other words, quality can refer to how something is or how good something is. Artistic quality is different from the quality of industrial products, whose quality is defined by, for instance, their lack of defects, deficiencies and significant variations. Artistic quality is different from the managerial concept that quality is the degree to which customers’ expectations are met or succeeded. As the opening examples from the Swedish Arts Council’s workshop indicate, artistic quality instead seems to build on significant variations and the ability to alter, shift or twist the viewer’s expectations rather than meeting (or exceeding) them.

Finally, to understand the particular research setting of the empirical case, it is useful to give some examples of previous research of the Swedish concept of artistic quality. Blomgren (2015) makes a distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new’ arguments for why the Swedish public sector should sponsor culture. An old, classic argument is that the state should finance culture and art because they have a positive influence on individuals, the so-called paternalistic argument. A second classic argument is that the state should promote culture that relates to our national identity. A third classic argument is that culture should promote the ‘right sort’ of political ideas, for example be a weapon in the arms of the working class. Newer arguments, on the contrary, include ideas that culture brings economic growth; that culture contributes to diversity and gender equality; is part of a sustainable societal development; makes us healthier; and reveals hidden power structures.

Strannegård (2007) argues that some qualities, such as the abrasion resistance in a bridge, or the number of times a door can be open and shut before it breaks, are easy to test and quantify, while qualities linked to aesthetics, ethics, symbolism and feelings are unquantifiable in nature. Sandin Bülow (2007) links quality for design to concepts such as well-being, genuineness, sustainability, ethics and authenticity. Wingårdh and Wærn (2007) describe that the quality of architecture rests on rational and sensual qualities; that is, how practical a house is to live in as well as the heat of the fireplace, the patina of the wooden floors, the view and the neighbors. Rönn (2007) moreover elaborates on six different takes on architectural quality and concludes that no group should has a monopoly to define what quality is for this particular form of cultural production.

The philosopher Bengt Brülde (2007) states that in order to evaluate (artistic) quality, one must first define what we mean by value. Leaning on Georg Henrik von Wright and Judith Jarvis Thomson, he argues that there are nine essential types of values: (1) functional value, (2) medical value, (3) skillfulness value, (4) moral value, (5) hedonic value, (6), aesthetic value, (7) epistemic value, (8) value-for and (9) absolute values. Artistic quality can for example be defined depending on whether it has instrumental positive consequences (functional value), if the artist has excellent technical skills (skillfulness value), if the artist is good or evil (moral value), if it brings pleasurable experiences (hedonic value), if it evokes complex, uniform and intense experiences (aesthetic value) or if it teaches us something valuable (epistemic value).

The different understandings of artistic quality among interviewees

As expected, already in the first interviews in this research project, it became clear that there were different opinions about what quality is and who should decide what it is. There were also diverse takes on how the evaluation process should be structured and why. The outcomes and follow-ups on artistic quality varied across different cultural public sector organizations, and there was a divide between those who advocated for quantifiable vis-à-vis qualitative evaluations. Some civil servants for instance supported the idea that it was the citizens’ views on what constitutes artistic quality that should be the guiding principle, whereas others thought it should be the views of people with formal education and in-depth knowledge about the respective art form that should matter. Yet others acknowledged that different groups – culture consumers, culture producers and others – had different tastes and needs and that public cultural financing should strike a balance between their sometimes conflicting interests. Culture financiers not only need to handle an institutional logic of the market and the democratic state in their organizations, but also fulfill expectations from different field of cultural production.

One informant, a chief administrator of one of the biggest public financiers in Sweden, said that the wording ‘artistic quality’ has followed her throughout her whole professional life. She has worked with the concept in different public organizations working with culture and has been directly involved in the renewals of the national targets for cultural policy. Her experience is that the quality in official documents either refers to ‘craftsmanship’ and ‘professionalism,’ on the one hand, and ‘originality’ and ‘relevance’ on the other. The meaning of ‘quality’ and specifically ‘artistic quality,’ however, is often vague. In addition, it is not always clear if there is a difference between ‘quality’ in the context of cultural production and the wording ‘artistic quality.’ Often, ‘quality,’ ‘artistic quality’ and ‘artistic renewal’ are used interchangeably, and it remains unclear what distinguishes each of these concepts in their respective contexts. The national target connected to artistic quality, implemented in 1996 and renewed in 2009, is actually formulated as to ‘promote quality and artistic renewal.’ The full Official Reports of the Swedish Government, however, makes no distinction between quality in this cultural context and the wording ‘artistic quality,’ and informants generally perceive these as sharing the same meaning. This informant furthermore said that there are some differences as to how the concept of artistic quality has been interpreted at different times. The target to strive for artistic renewal was emphasized more strongly after the 1990s. She also adds: ‘Cultural politics are really layers and layers of different agreements and decisions, decided at different times and in different contexts.’

Despite the many and complex targets for public cultural financing, most informants in this study witnessed that the target to promote ‘artistic quality’ was the single most important target, while also being the target that was by far the most difficult to define. One civil servant for instance described that the cultural financing in his municipality strives for five targets: (1) artistic quality, (2) public reach, (3) participation, (4) equality and diversity, and (5) economy. Although the criterion of artistic quality was said to be the most important, the civil servants in this municipality wanted to avoid any definition of what this criterion entailed.

We asked ourselves: Should we write something about what we mean by artistic quality? And we said no, we shouldn’t, because that is something that is constantly in flux. Ten years ago, photography wasn’t really considered art, but today it is.

Some informants similarly expressed that it would be undesirable to define artistic quality. One male civil servant in a small municipality for instance forcefully said:

It is highly inappropriate to measure [artistic quality] in any way, because it will affect what type of art is financed, and who will be granted financing, and we may well see in 50 years’ time that we missed a great deal of qualitative art because it did not fit a particular definition.

A female theater producer, who was asked what she thought that public financiers meant by artistic quality, answered:

I don’t think they themselves know what they mean. I think that’s the problem. They want both mainstream and avant-garde. (…) They want culture to be a quick-fix for everything: they want culture to fix gender equality and diversity issues, and democracy in general, they want it to be popular and exclusive, and preferably be international and strengthen international relations.

A bureaucratic view of artistic quality

The informant who conceptualized artistic quality as a two-fold concept, meaning both craftsmanship and professionalism, on the one hand, and originality and relevance, on the other, based her take on the concept in formal state documents.

Many other informants similarly based their view of artistic quality on the specific context of the Swedish public sector. These informants often answered that the citizen in the municipality is the one that should be in focus – it is his or her view of artistic quality that is more important than civil servant and expert opinions. There is a consensus that different groups – citizens, civil servants, culture producers, culture experts and politicians – generally have different views on quality. One male administrator, with a background in the movie industry, said that most citizens have a rather uncomplicated understanding of artistic quality. ‘They would say when it is good, when it is fun and when it is surprising.’ The ideal that civil servants should adjust to citizens and not the other way around is expressed by another male informant in one of the more segregated municipalities in the Stockholm region:

The strongest [trend] right now is to have the focus of the citizen, and not to try to make the citizens change their viewpoint. But citizens have plenty of different viewpoints. The citizens in our municipality are very different from each other, in terms of social class, origin and past experiences.

This civil servant works in a municipality where more than fifty percent of the citizens are immigrants. This, the informant argued, implies that the Western canon is not relevant in the municipality.

It doesn’t matter if we say that this has great artistic quality or is tremendously interesting if nobody shows any interest. What kind of quality is that? (…) I think we need to view quality in a different way, and I think we are going in that direction. It’s not about professionalism or skillfulness. That’s important for artists, but we need to broaden the idea of what quality is, because this is what the world looks like today, and what our municipality looks like.

Many informants highlight bureaucracy as a central part of the assessment of artistic quality. Highly valued ideals are that applicants should be treated fairly, that there is an arm’s length distance between evaluators and evaluated, that decisions are based on competence and that the operations of the public financiers should be evaluated over time. One female civil servant said that in her municipality, it is evaluated how many people attended a certain financed cultural event or a certain art gallery. She argues that is not meaningful to set a target to do a specified number of exhibitions and then deem it a success if this number is met or exceeded. Instead, the more important question is how these exhibitions were received, and what they conveyed to the visitors. As previously mentioned, there was a divide between civil servants who were in favor of or against measuring and evaluating projects, especially in quantifiable measures. Some saw evaluations as bureaucratic procedures that exist solely for their own sake. One female administrator in a larger municipality south of Stockholm jokingly described how other people she contacted to get evaluative measures must see her: ‘They must think: “What kind of crazy person is this who spams me with these idiotic questions?”’ Another female administrator laughed and said: ‘Yes, why do we really do this, to satisfy some controllers? “Yes, here’s finally a number of the money we spent.” I don’t know. What is it really for? That’s why we discuss these things all the time.’

To ensure that there is an arm’s length distance between the civil servants and the culture producers, it is not uncommon to make group decisions. One female administrator working in a state body said that it is more interesting to discuss the system that is created to achieve the target to promote artistic quality than what artistic quality is per se. In this state body, decisions are made by groups of experts, who are chosen on a two-year mandate, and who cannot sit more than four years in total. The same informant said that in meetings with cultural producers, civil servants explain how the system works but do not give straightforward recommendations on how to write an application, in order to maintain the arm’s length distance. Related to the reference groups is the issue of representativeness. Although all groups focus on having a diversity of members in terms of gender and ethnicity, some demand that all members have an expertise, while others on the contrary strive to not only include experts in the reference groups. Another administrator in this state body said that reference groups must be broadened and include people who would typically not be chosen as a member. She however argued that there is a trade-off between having the most formally competent members and the most representative group of her municipality. ‘If you go for the first alternative, you miss out on a lot, but if you go for the second alternative, you miss out on other things.’ In another large municipality, one administrator said that people in her position can find themselves in a paradox: they are recruited because they are the among the selected few who have taken cultural studies at university, but are then assigned to make choices that will be the best for the majority of the people who lack these competencies. ‘Why do we need civil servants at all? If we should do that, we could just as well hire anyone to these positions.’

Finally, the pricing of publicly financed cultural production is a delicate matter for the informants who have primarily expressed that democratic participation should be the main source of legitimacy. Many have said that all cultural projects with children as the target group should be free of charge and that schools are not to charge their students or their students’ parents for any cultural event. Moreover, any other cultural event that may take entrance fees from visitors should be modestly priced so that citizens of all social groups should have a fair chance to take part. The chairman of the board in a cultural organization made a sharp distinction that public financing should only be granted to projects that could not survive in the commercial markets. For example, the art that should be financed should have an artistic quality that is provocative, reflexive and thought-provoking. ‘The market will never do that, because it only gives us what we want and like.’

‘Give people what they want’

An alternative position on what constitutes artistic quality focuses on the potential of a project to attract as much attention as possibility in competition with other projects. Good projects to finance are here projects that people would like to buy tickets to. Whether these projects are original or will get positive expert reviews is less important. Although this position is uncommon in the set of interviews, it does exist. Many informants, however, emphasize the commercial aspects of a cultural project as one of several important aspects. One female administrator in a smaller municipality said that it is important to “give people what they want,’ but then altered her position and said that it is to communicate projects to give the impression that it gives people what they want. Hopefully, cultural projects can also ‘give them something that they did not know that they wanted.’ A market-based, commercial communication can in this way function as a Trojan horse, in which other qualities than commercial attractiveness are concealed under a masque of obsequiousness. Cultural projects must, in this view, first play to the gallery and second perhaps be able to move from mainstream niche culture. This view focuses on immediate stimuli and prefers well-known, easily sold and realizable projects over experimental avant-garde or culture that seeks to promote self-cultivation rather than entertainment. This, however, is not to be understood as if the proponents of a market-based view of artistic quality in the study would dislike culture that has aesthetic, epistemic or moral qualities; it is just to say that they put commercial attractiveness first.

One male chief administrator in a larger municipality close to Stockholm described that his municipality has traditionally prioritized sport events over culture, but that they both serve the same purpose, namely to ‘strengthen the brand of the municipality.’ He said that the best indicator of artistic quality is the number of people who visit an event and made clear that the cultural projects for adults should target everyone and not just citizens with special cultural interests. Another informant, also a male chief administrator, said that it is important that cultural events are priced according to ‘market prices’ and not be subsidized, not least because higher prices signal better quality. In yet another municipality, a civil servant emphasized that an important aspect when deciding who will be granted financing is the applicant’s marketing skills. He argued that such abilities have become more important in recent years.

Some of the culture producers expressed a commercial view of artistic quality. One artist and illustrator, who also teaches at an art school, said that he, unlike many other culture producers, viewed commercialism as something positive: ‘I use the word commercialism even though people don’t like it. It is a conscious choice. To me, it stands for someone who wants to communicate.’ He continued:

In my view artistic quality is to, in the most efficient way, deliver pictures that are right for the specific context that the commissioner has decided. My job is to deliver the best possible quality in the picture or format that the commissioner has decided and that reaches and communicates to that target group.

One female cultural producer in the study said that marketization of publicly financed culture was a strong trend between 2006 and 2014, when Sweden had a right-wing government. When the new national targets for cultural policy passed legislation in 2009, the old target to counteract the negative consequences of commercialism was removed. In addition, during these years the former minister of culture, Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth, made several positive remarks about the possibilities of private sponsoring of cultural events and the introduction of entrepreneurship courses in art educations. This cultural producer said:

“What they indirectly said was that art could not independently stand up for itself. They said that culture must be more attuned to the market, and forgot that culture already is attuned to its own market. They instead wanted culture to enter other [commercial] markets.”

Quality should be assessed by experts and professionals

In addition to those who emphasized bureaucratic and commercial aspects of artistic quality, a third position also emerged in the empirical data. A male civil servant in a smaller municipality delivers one representative quote:

A surgeon is better able to assess the quality of an appendectomy than other people. You have to think of the assessment of artistic quality in the same way. If you have studied art and seen a lot of art, you are more able to evaluate if it has high quality or not. But this approach is of course different from the view of the average person, because he or she will have totally other preferences of what constitutes good quality.

Another female civil servant in a bigger municipality said:

There is well-developed craftsmanship in all cultural practices that people on the outside don’t understand. People have all sorts of opinions. Some think that you can let in all sorts of laymen that don’t understand things and are untrained. Some think that you can let anyone manage a cultural center, but they wouldn’t let just anyone run a construction company. There is a form of disrespect against genuine competence and knowledge from those who are not part of the cultural world. That is my belief and it often makes me very upset.

Another civil servant working in a state body described that the status within the cultural professions is important for the assessment of artistic quality: ‘You can have experts, you can have highly ranked artists and groups that you engage, and then you have focus on their status.’

The proponents of this view in the dataset often emphasize that culture experts decide artistic quality. To a lesser extent, they define what these assessments of different culture experts have in common. One female civil servant specialized in dance production said that high artistic quality can be found in very different productions, even though they are all characterized by a high degree of ‘authenticity’ and ‘artistic renewal.’ Both classic, canonical plays and contemporary, newly written counterparts, she said, can be considered being of high artistic quality. Canonical plays can have artistically renewed adaptions and still keep the original spirit of the work. Therefore, she believes that it is genuinely hard to give one definition of what constitutes artistic quality, even though it would be ‘good to be able to at least define the lowest common denominator.’ Another female civil servant in a bigger municipality offered the following answer: ‘The lowest common denominator is education. All of the culture producers who produce high artistic quality have an [artistic] education.’

Discussion

In this study there are obvious differences between how different informants interpret artistic quality.

When analyzing the plethora of interviews through the lens of different institutional logics, however, patterns do appear. The public financing of the arts in the Stockholm region offers a case where the institutional logic of the state, the market and the art professions co-exist and to some degree compete.

Informants that mainly base their views in accordance with the institutional logic of the state argue that artistic quality should focus on the preferences of the citizens. They are very concerned with the equal rights of all social groups, genders, socio-economic classes, religions, sexual identities and so forth. This approach relies on the state bureaucracy in order to promote artistic quality.

Informants who mainly base their view in accordance with the institutional logic of the market instead focus on potential consumers and pay less attention to which social groups the consumers belong. Compared to the first group, these informants put less emphasis on, for example, skillfulness, moral, epistemic and aesthetic value of a cultural production, and instead focus on hedonic values (Brülde 2007).

The third group, informants with a view of artistic value based on the institutional logic of the art professions clearly assert that artistic value is the experts with formal training to decide and evaluate. Artistic quality should not be for laymen or average people to decide. A culture producer’s status within this group is far more important than their commercial appeal to consumers or the viewpoints of citizens in that particular municipality or region. The aesthetic value of a cultural production is hence in focus.

The interviews with Swedish public financiers of culture show that the concept of artistic quality has been subjected to several co-existing institutional logics for a longer period of time. This observation, that fields can have plural institutional logics for longer periods of times, is well-described in other studies (e.g. Cooper et al. 1996; Zilber 2002; Reay and Hinings 2009; Battilana and Dorado 2010; Pache and Santos 2013) and questions the idea that one institutional logic will replace another (e.g. Hoffman 1999; Scott et al. 2000; Greenwood, Suddaby, and Hinings 2002; Kitchener 2002; Hensmans 2003; Rao, Monin, and Durand 2003, 2005; Thornton, Jones, and Kury 2005; Lounsbury 2007).

Even though the three institutional logics seem rather stable, some informants testify that the institutional logic of the market was more pronounced during the period of 2006–2014, when Sweden had a right-wing government. The following quote from one of the informants moreover suggests that the institutional complexity of the organizational study closely resemblances what Cooper et al. (1996) denote as ‘sedimentation’: ‘Cultural politics are really layers and layers of different agreements and decisions, decided at different times and in different contexts.’

Clearly, the target to promote ‘artistic quality’ in such an institutional complexity does not have a single abstract, context-free meaning (cf. Alvesson and Kärreman 2000). Instead, this concept has a number of different meanings linked to different institutional logics in the organizational field. Some meanings are poetic and focus on the transformative potential of art (‘artistic quality is when the viewer is emotionally touched despite intellectual objections’ and ‘artistic quality is when the viewer reluctantly changes position’). Other meanings are emotional (‘artistic quality evokes curiosity and empathy’), grounded in democratic ideals (‘equal opportunity and diversity contribute to artistic quality’) or contextual (‘artistic quality must always be specified in relation to its art form, context, time and space’). Meanings grounded in different documents published by the state can be more technocratic in nature (‘artistic quality refers to craftsmanship and professionalism, on the one hand, and originality and relevance, on the other’). Yet other meanings straightforwardly suggest that artistic quality is to be defined by the target group (artistic quality is when it is appreciated by citizens, consumers or experts).

Basic cognitive linguistics teaches us to separate form from meaning. For the normal word, one form corresponds to one meaning. Synonyms are when two or more forms correspond to the same meaning. Homonymy and polysemy instead refer to cases where one form corresponds to two or several meanings. If these cases are unrelated (for instance ‘bat’ – the sport item and the animal), they are homonyms and if they are related (for instance ‘table’ – the furniture item and the ways to sort and present information in columns and rows), they are polysemes (Croft and Cruse 2004). Indeed, if forms have polysemous meanings, this not only complicates the relationship between the language use of such words and their representation of reality, but also calls for a closer investigation regarding the situation in which they are used.

This study conceptualizes artistic quality as a ‘polysemous target’; that is, a target stated in words that have multiple meanings in a semantic system. This concept contributes to the literature on plural institutional logics by departing from the naïve language use assuming that targets have univocal and context-free meaning, and bridges the linguistic turn in organizational theory with the study of plural institutional logics. The importance of this contribution stretches far beyond the organizational field of the public financing of arts in the Stockholm region. It draws attention to all types of targets that might have polysemous meanings, for example targets involving ‘quality,’ ‘excellence’ or ‘greatness,’ to name a few. The study extends the conclusion by Jay (2013) that hybrid organizations subjected to plural and contradictory institutional logics always face paradoxical outcomes; that what is seen as a success from the point of view of one institutional logic is seen as a failure from a conflicting institutional logic, and vice versa. That type of reasoning seems to picture these situations as crossroads, where actors have (at least) two alternatives to choose from, which both yield paradoxical results. This study rather draws attention to situations where actors in a hybrid organization seemingly work towards the same goal. Given the polysemous nature of such goals, actors with a naïve language use and interpretation of such targets will find themselves in situations where they do not seem to have a choice and where the only possible trajectory will always lead to paradoxical outcomes.

Polysemous targets can be linked to both studies on categorization and classification (i.e. Haveman and Rao 1997; Mohr and Duquenne 1997; Ruef 1999; Ocasio and Joseph 2005) and organizational attention (Ocasio 1995; Thornton 2002, 2004; Glynn and Lounsbury 2005; Lounsbury 2007). The first set of studies develops our understanding of institutional logics by constructing taxonomies and categories that may in turn open up for theoretical modeling and hypothesis testing. The following table summarizes the different meanings to the form ‘artistic quality’ in this study, and thereby proposes a framework that can be used as a starting point for analyzing the meanings of other polysemous targets Table 2.

Table 2. Taxonomy of the different meanings and interpretations to the polysemous form “artistic quality.”

	Institutional logic of the state	Institutional logic of the market	Institutional logic of the profession
1. Polysemous form	“Artistic quality”	“Artistic quality”	“Artistic quality”
2. Interpretative prerogative	Citizens	Consumers	Culture experts
3. Values in focus	Functional, moral, epistemic and skillfulness values	Hedonic values	Aesthetic and skillfulness values
4. Examples of meanings	• “The view of the citizen defines artistic quality” • “Artistic quality is achieved through equal opportunity and diversity” • “Artistic quality should be interpreted in light of written, formal, state documents”	• “The view of consumers defines artistic quality” • “Artistic quality is defined by how many consumers a cultural project attracts and how much they are willing to spend” • “Artistic quality is when the product fulfills the demands of the consumer or commissioner”	• “The view of culture experts defines artistic quality” • “Formally educated culture producers promote artistic quality” • “Artistic value is determined by the professional status of the culture producer”
5. View of cultural projects	Cultural projects embody and foster democratic ideals	Cultural projects are market commodities for entertainment	Cultural projects are artworks with intrinsic value

Relating to the other set of literature on organizational attention, this study confirms that decision-makers focus their attention on issues that are consistent with prevailing institutional logics. Like Ocasio and Joseph (2005), this study moreover shows that strategy formulation processes can be fragmented and contested, and also entail multiple foci of attention. In fact, stating targets in polysemes naturally invites decision-makers to direct their attention to different issues linked to the institutional logic they personally feel the most affinity with. Decision-makers with a predominately state-based view of artistic quality naturally tend to focus on democratic representation in the production and consumption of publicly financed cultural projects. Decision-makers with a market-based view instead focus on revenues and profits, while decision-makers with a profession-based view look for good reviews by reputed critics, and so on. What separates a case with a polysemous target from hybrid organizations with clearly demarcated institutional logics – for instance when a sales department of a newspaper works according to the institutional logic of the market and the journalist in accordance with the institutional logic of their profession – is that the organizational attention is more often rooted in unspoken meanings. The polysemous target runs the risk of also being a mystified concept (Minnich 1990) excluding ‘the other’ and appearing neutral and objective in spite of being characterized by ideology and politics. Given that very few studies investigate if and how institutional logics (be it of the state, the market or the profession) are gendered, future studies with a gender-critical analysis are certainly encouraged. However, is it always a problem that the meanings of a polysemous target are not clear, or does this on the contrary provide a solution to an organizational problem? One obvious angle is that polysemous targets offer one way, sometimes even the only possibly way, for managing the contradictory expectations that arise from plural institutional logics in an organizational field.

Conclusions

This study introduces the concept of polysemous targets to the body of literature on institutional logics. These targets have one polysemous form with several meanings tied to different institutional logics. The article makes at least three contributions.

First, even though it is known that targets are interpreted differently in sites with different institutional logics (cf. Lounsbury 2007), and that meaning is a social construct that lacks a one-to-one relationship to reality, they have not been addressed in terms of their polysemic character. Actors are not merely ‘passive vessels’ of shared meanings; powerful actors may also try to impose their world-view and meanings on others (Zilber 2002). One contribution of this study is that it allows for analyses of polysemic targets that the involved actors do not necessarily themselves perceive as polysemic. Contrary to cases where differences in definitions of success (i.e. in Lounsbury 2007) are clear, and easily measurable, making use of a polysemous framework can act as a tool to identify differences that require a more interpretative analysis. It appears to be especially useful in analyzing organizations that seemingly work towards the same goal although under closer investigation, do not.

Second, the study contributes to institutional logics by offering a novel tool to analyze institutional change. Zilber (2002) shows that empirical studies of institutional change are generally conducted by studying actions alone, and not meaning, which makes our understanding of institutional change inadequate or misleading. By introducing polysemy to the analysis of meaning, we can see more details and variances in our data material. If the meaning of the ‘artistic quality’ in this case would not be analyzed as a polysemous target, it could risk being seen as a univocal concept that all actors in the study agree that they strive to achieve. The concept of polysemous targets hence help us see differences where others would see similarities.

Third, it can be observed that the groups identified by the three institutional logics in play, required the analysis to look beyond the face value of ‘artistic quality’ and further investigate its polysemous meaning. The data set was also analyzed in terms of gender, profession and workplace, but without any clear and systematic differences emerging. One benefit of analyzing the data in relation to polysemous meanings is hence that it enables inductively driven categories which are more meaningful to analyze.

Despite a longstanding interest in meanings in institutional theory, there are practically no studies that have analyzed how plural institutional logics may be instantiated in polysemous targets; that is, targets stated in words that have multiple meaning in a semantic system. This study addresses this unfortunate lacuna through a theory-generating single case study of how civil servants and culture producers in the Stockholm region interpret the target to promote artistic quality. The data of this study shows how different meanings adhere to institutional logics of the state, the market and the (art) professions respectively.

While also making an empirical contribution to a national scholarly discussion about artistic quality in Sweden, the relevance of the main theoretical contribution of this study is that it stretches far beyond its empirical research. Future studies on if and how polysemous targets function in other organizational fields, with other institutional logics, are strongly encouraged. A few viable directions for future studies are for example to study how polysemous targets evolve over a longer period of time, how targets that are univocal turn polysemous or vice versa, and how polysemous targets and their inherent institutional logics might be gendered or perceived differently depending on actors’ educational background or social class. Given the large number of organizations that have vague or multifaceted targets open to interpretation, there seems to be plenty of possible research areas that could generate more theory linking polysemy to plural institutional logics and thereby counteract a naïve language use that deprives words of their actual contexts and meanings.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).