Abstract
In the decade and a half after the publication of the first edition of The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism, scholars of organization theory intensified their search for relevance in a turbulent world of new organizational forms and incompletely explored global challenges. The first edition carefully explicated the theoretical foundations of the institutional perspectives of organizational theory. In 34 chapters covering legitimacy, institutional logics, institutional agency, and the role of power—among others—organizational scholars gained an important resource that emphasized the influence of cultural elements in which organizational action plays out. I have no doubt that those chapters guided the expansion of research into processes and mechanisms associated with institutional complexity, hybrid organizations, categorization, networks, micro-foundations, and practice theories.
As inquisitive and self-critical as organizational institutionalists tend to be, it is no surprise that soon after the first volume was published, concern arose over the direction and relevance of organizational studies. In the first instance, beginning with Hambrick (2007) and Davis (2010), theorists considered whether the focus on organizations as objects and the emergence of new empirical tools had turned to serving the publishing imperatives of our profession in ways that obscured investigations aimed at benefiting our understanding of social forces (Davis, 2015; Barley, 2016a). These provocative authors called for greater emphasis on observations and replication that would uncover underlying organizational processes and lead to the development of more informative theories (Greenwood, 2016).
Following earlier discussions (Stern and Barley, 1996; Hinings and Greenwood, 2002), organization scholars also became increasingly restive over the subjects we study (Suddaby, Hardy, and Huy, 2011), calling attention to climate change, gender inequality, income inequality, political turbulence, questions of sustainability, and more (Kallio and Nordberg, 2006; Howard-Grenville et al., 2014; de Bakker et al., 2020; Ergene, Banerjee, and Hoffman, 2020). Calls increased for organization studies to address such “grand challenges,” and alternate organizing principles and forms such as B-corporations and C-form communities arose that have altered organization studies (Ferraro, Etzion, and Gehman, 2015; David, Sine, and Serra, 2016; George et al., 2016). These efforts allowed Lounsbury and Beckman (2015) to “celebrate” the growing internationalization of organization theory, as well as the growth of new theoretical paradigms and scholarly colloquia. These new directions have resulted in a greater emphasis on efforts to create theories of how organizations influence the social world (Barley, 2016b; Davis and Sinha, 2021; Eberhart, Barley, and Nelson, 2021).
Into this challenging scholarly environment—in which methods, theoretical paradigms, and shifting interests intersect—comes this second edition of The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism. It seems no mean task to update the knowledge of this sometimes controversial field. In the second edition, the editors and authors offer a reordination of the themes and theories of organizational institutionalism. A key element of this reordination is a new section titled “Consequences.” Acknowledging a shift in perspective called for by Davis, Barley, and others, the chapters in this section reflect the idea that organizations have profound effects on the social systems in which they are embedded. The chapters frequently incorporate institutional pluralism, categories, and institutional logics, which have become prolific perspectives from which we view how organizations intersect with everyday lived experiences.
The seven chapters in this new section engage with a broad array of current social issues. Two of them focus on diversity and inclusion: Dobbin and Kalev offer the novel view that organizational diversity efforts can transcend ceremonial purposes when they include managers in diversity efforts instead of constraining managers’ behavior; Rojas challenges organizational theorists to engage with related sociological research on diversity because race interacts with important institutional concepts of categorization, meaning, and coordination of organizational behavior. He points to the gap between institutional studies and the literature on race yet argues that organization institutionalism has much to say to the growing and important work on race and inequality. As economists and sociologists have documented the growing social and economic inequality that is so much a part of public discourse, two chapters bring organizational institutionalism into this discourse: Amis, Munir, and Mair focus on the institutional micro-foundations of inequality as they emerge and are enacted in taken-for-granted activities and routines of organization; Davis, in turn, explains how inequality is exacerbated and legitimated by the reshaping of the social domains of financialization, offshoring, social welfare, education, and platform employment. He argues that income inequality is partly a consequence of individuals’ engagement with organizations and is brought about by organizational practices that reflect changes in employment practices and the declining centrality of corporations.
Jennings and Hoffman take up climate, the natural environment, and sustainability as they cast an institutional eye on this prominent challenge. They suggest that these issues are often intractable given the diffuse agency, strong context, and uncertainty regarding the effects of action leading to paradoxes and tensions between institutional and natural environment studies. By examining these paradoxes and tensions, they point the way for institutional scholars to employ theoretical paradigms such as institutional logics or social movement theories to better inform policy and organizational scholarship. Next, addressing the growing social importance of entrepreneurship, David, Sine, and Serra provide a comprehensive survey of the application of institutional theories to studies of entrepreneurial organizations that have diffused across many academic realms and gained international interest. They trace the roots of institutional perspectives in entrepreneurial studies from the quest for legitimacy to a growing emphasis on how new organizations emerge. In doing so, they tap into much broader discussions of institutional influences on individuals and the organizations they create, thus informing studies on the role of agency in institutional change and the formation of collective identities. Palmer casts an eye on organizational malfeasance, pointing out how institutions can sustain wrongdoing and why institutions are a potentially helpful lens through which organizational scholars can view this important social phenomenon. By focusing on how institutions shape and sustain wrongdoing, Palmer also adds a challenge to organizational scholars to give greater attention to how the institutional environment draws the line between right and wrong, organizational responses, and related questions of punishment.
While I have largely focused on the new chapters in this edition, updates of chapters from the previous edition reflect continuing and meaningful theoretical conversations around institutional work, identity, power, categorization, pluralism, and networks. The edition begins with two important chapters that reassert core theoretical foundations: legitimacy and organizational fields. Even in these foundational chapters, the researchers share insights that move beyond what readers found in the first edition. Deephouse, Bundy, Tost, and Suchman offer a comprehensive survey and exploration of organizational legitimacy, providing conceptual clarity for this core concept. They raise insightful questions about social evaluations on individual and organizational levels. Wooten and Hoffman re-emphasize the centrality and evolution of the concept of organizational fields. Indeed, each chapter from the previous edition has extended its scope to engage with the social issues addressed in the new “Consequences” section. Notably, the increased emphasis on practice-driven institutionalism in Chapter 14 from Smets, Aristidou, and Whittington is, to me, one of the most exciting updates for its potential to shed new light on institutional complexity, work, and change as we continue to study the role of agency and micro-foundations of our field. Both the new and updated chapters express the responsiveness, expanding scope, and dynamism of institutional thought. Overall, this edition shows that we are developing and extending theoretical ideas that meaningfully contribute to our knowledge and understanding of the social world. As Barley wrote in both editions of this handbook, the “coalface” of organizational institutionalism is where “institutions and actors meet in the throes of everyday life” (p. 358). This new edition, by exploring our lived challenges as organizations influence our social world, makes it clear that Barley’s “coalface” is being eaten into by the drill bit of organizational institutionalism’s dynamism.