Institutional Complexity and Organizational Responses

Abstract

Organizations face institutional complexity whenever they confront incompatible prescriptions from multiple institutional logics. Our interest is in how plural institutional logics, refracted through field-level structures and processes, are experienced within organizations and how organizations respond to such complexity. We draw on a variety of cognate literatures to discuss the field-level structural characteristics and organizational attributes that shape institutional complexity. We then explore the repertoire of strategies and structures that organizations deploy to cope with multiple, competing demands. The analytical framework developed herein is presented to guide future scholarship in the systematic analysis of institutional complexity. We conclude by suggesting avenues for future research.

Acknowledgements

We are extremely grateful to Emily Block, Hokyu Hwang, Candace Jones, Matt Kraatz, Anne Pache, and Editors Art Brief and Jim Walsh for their constructive comments and suggestions on the earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

There is, of course, an extensive literature on family businesses exploring how “family” influences commercial behavior, but this very rarely connects to the institutional perspective.

It is interesting to note that field-level constructs such as fragmentation and formalization are reminiscent of the constructs early organizational theorists used to describe organizational structures (e.g., Pugh, Hickson, Hinings, & Turner, 1968). The ways that institutional structure co-mingles with organizational structure and the extent to which similar constructs might translate to multiple levels of analysis is an intriguing avenue of future research. We thank Jim Walsh for this insightful comment.