Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Institutional Work
  • Cited by 608
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
September 2009
Print publication year:
2009
Online ISBN:
9780511596605
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511596605
Subjects:
Organisation Studies, Management
Information

Book description

The 'institutional' approach to organizational research has shown how enduring features of social life - such as marriage and bureaucracy - act as mechanisms of social control. Such approaches have traditionally focused attention on the relationships between organizations and the fields in which they operate, providing strong accounts of the processes through which institutions govern action. In contrast, the study of institutional work reorients these traditional concerns, shifting the focus to understanding how action affects institutions. This book sets a research agenda within the field of institutional work by analyzing the ways in which individuals, groups, and organizations work to create, maintain, and disrupt the institutions that structure their lives. Through a series of essays and case studies, it explores the conceptual core of institutional work, identifies institutional work strategies, provides exemplars for future empirical research, and embeds the concept within broader sociological debates and ideas.

Reviews

Review of the hardback:'Max Weber told us that institutions cannot be understood without considering the historical aggregation of individual activities. For many years, though, institutional theory had done little with this insight, focusing instead on the role of institutions as powerful social constraints. Priorities have clearly changed and this volume belongs with the contemporary lively ‘deconstruction’ of the institutional ‘iron cage.’ It is a welcome and timely contribution, demonstrating through a series of rich empirical explorations that institutions are created, changed and maintained through work, activities, practices, and discourses. We need more books of this kind, emphasizing the conflictual, messy, contradictory, ambiguous, processual, and ongoing nature of institutional work.’

Marie-Laure Djelic - ESSEC Business School

Review of the hardback:'The concept of institutional work is one of the most exciting conceptual developments in institutional theory in the last decade. It provides an invaluable conceptual framework for understanding the institutional effects of purposeful action and has connected conversations about institutional maintenance and change in a powerful new way. In this volume, Lawrence, Suddaby, and Leca expand on their early work on the topic and bring together an impressive group of scholars to further develop the concept through inspired theorizing and direct empirical application. This book is an absolute must for anyone interested in the future of institutional theory. I highly recommend you read it today!'

Nelson Phillips - Imperial College Business School

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 11010 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 26848 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between September 2016 - 14th May 2025. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.