Institutions and institutional work (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006)

Lawrence, T. B., & Suddaby, R. (2006). Institutions and Institutional Work. In S. Clegg, C. Hardy, T. B. Lawrence & W. R. Nord (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organization studies (2nd ed., pp. 215-254). London: Sage Publications.

In this chapter, Lawrence and Suddaby (2006) concern themselves with empirical research (published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal and Organization Studies over the past 15 years) that focuses on the study of institutional work. Institutional work is 'the purposive action of individuals and organizations aimed at creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions' (p. 215). They argue that the entry point for this literature is the synthesis of two sets of writing: 'one that articulated the core elements of the study of institutional work... and a second that has the potential to provide a robust theoretical foundation for the concept of institutional work' (p. 216). The first set of writing is concerned with agency in institutional studies and under this umbrella are the key concepts of institutional entrepreneurship (DiMaggio, 1988), strategic responses of institutional processes (Oliver, 1991) and the antecedents of deinstitutionalization (Oliver, 1992). The second set of writing takes up the practice turn in social theory (Schatzki et al. 2001) and falls under the banner of the sociology of practice.


This synthesis, they argue, 'provides a solid conceptual foundation for the emerging study of institutional work' (p. 219) which involves three key elements that:

1. 'highlight the awareness, skill and reflexivity of individual and collective actors';
2. understand 'institutions as constituted in the more and less conscious action of individual and collective actors'; and,
3. by adopting this perspective, 'we cannot step outside of action as practice-even action which is aimed at changing the institutional order of an organizational field occurs within sets of institutionalized rules' (pp. 219-220).

They then proceed to map empirical studies of institutional work onto a preliminary taxonomy which I have summarized in the diagram above (to my diagram I have also made my own minor additions, namely, two boxes indicating institutional emergence and deinstitutionalization on either side of the Lawrence and Suddaby map). This mapping of the empirical literature constitutes about half of the chapter. The final section of the Lawrence and Suddaby chapter highlights three research approaches that can be used to study institutional work. Even though they suggest that a wide range of approaches can be suitable, including ethnography, they single out discourse analysis, actor-network theory and semiotics. In sum, the chapter provides a foundation for future research and ample evidence 'that our understanding of institutional work is formative at best' (p. 246). In framing the study of institutional work this way, Lawrence and Suddaby open up a new arena for organizational scholars interested in researching institutions. Of the many possibilities available, they are pointing us in the three directions; diffusion, critical theory and multi-level analysis. It is worth citing their closing paragraph in full:

To conclude, we suggest that the concept of institutional work provides a new way of seeing institutions. We urge researchers to focus on the interstitial elements of institutions: the gap between structure and action, the moment that separates agency from unintended consequences or the frenetic production of meaning that generates the illusion of stasis and permanence in institutions. Most emphatically, we want to break the dramatic spell of institutions and draw attention behind the scenes, to the actors, writers and stage-hands that produce them. In this sense our call to attend to institutional work draws a distinctly political approach to institutions in which our core puzzle is to understand the ways in which disparate sets of actors, each pursuing their own vision, can become co-ordinated in a common project. By paying attention to institutional work, theorists can avoid the subjective illusion of institutional outcomes and begin to unpack the relational and interactive moments of institutional production (p. 249).

When I first started reading about institutional theory (and then primary texts in institutional theory) I was somewhat discouraged. It seemed to me as though much of the work was uncompromisingly structuralist and that it closed down any possibility for critique. I am still only just beginning to grasp some of the scope of this massive field but thanks to Lawrence and Suddaby with a renewed passion and a very different view of what institutional theory can do.