Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T04:01:10.008Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

15 - Temporality and Institutional Maintenance

The Role of Reactivation Work on Material Artefacts

from Part IV - History and Duration: Making Things Last, Enduring Politics and Organizing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2023

François-Xavier de Vaujany
Affiliation:
Universite Paris Dauphine-PSL
Robin Holt
Affiliation:
Copenhagen Business School
Albane Grandazzi
Affiliation:
Grenoble Ecole de Management
Get access

Summary

This chapter investigates the relationship between temporality and the maintenance of an institution by focusing on the role of material artefacts that instiante it. The pressure of time can not only challenge institutions that are often considered temporal, but also their material artefacts which can face decay or damage. In line with some institutional scholars for whom institutions never completely die, we consider material artefacts as “remnants,” i.e., as traces that remain of something that once existed. As such, those artefacts can be brought back to life, and by consequence the institution they instiantate, through what we call “reactivation work”. This “reactivation work” performed on material artefacts can follow a conservative approach, in reactivating artefacts as they were originally designed in terms of material and/or meanings, or a progressive approach, to make them fit with more contemporaneous or future expectations. Whatever the temporal approach, we believe this alternative view on institutional maintenance and material artefacts offer new paths for exploring the life of institutions and, more specifically, their possible atemporal nature.

Type
Chapter
Information
Organization as Time
Technology, Power and Politics
, pp. 329 - 348
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adam, B. (1990). Time and Social Theory. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Ancona, D. G., Goodman, P. S., Lawrence, B. S. & Tushman, M. L. (2001). Time: A new research lens. Academy of Management Review, 26(4), 645–63.Google Scholar
Benford, R. D. & Snow, D. A. (2000). Framing processes and social movements: An overview and assessment. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 611–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bijker, W. E., Hughes, T. & Pinch, T. (1987). The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bitektine, A. & Haack, P. (2015). The “macro” and the “micro” of legitimacy: Toward a multilevel theory of the legitimacy process. Academy of Management Review, 40(1), 4975.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blanc, A. & Huault, I. (2014). Against the digital revolution? Institutional maintenance and artefacts within the French recorded music industry. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 83, 1023.Google Scholar
Boutinot, A. & Delacour, H. (2022). How the malleability of material artefacts contributes to institutional maintenance: The Guimard Metropolitan Railway entrances, 1914–2000. Organization Studies, 43(12), 1967–89.Google Scholar
Boxenbaum, E. (2006). Lost in translation. The making of Danish diversity management. American Behavioural Scientist, 49(7), 939–48.Google Scholar
Boxenbaum, E., Jones, C., Meyer, R. E. & Svejenova, S. (2018). Towards an articulation of the material and visual turn in Organization Studies. Organization Studies, 39(5–6), 597616.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, J. L. (2005). Where Do We Stand? Common Mechanisms in Organizations and Social Movements Research. In Davis, G. F., McAdam, D., Scott, W. R. & Zald, M. N. (eds), Social Movements and Organization Theory (pp. 4168). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, M. J. & Miller, D. (2011). The relational perspective as a business mindset: Managerial implications for East and West. Academy of Management Perspectives, 25(3), 618.Google Scholar
Clark, R. K. (1990). Scheduling Dependent Real-Time Activities. Pittsburg, PN: Carnegie Mellon University.Google Scholar
Colombero, S. (2015). Instantiating through collective bricolage: The case of the Listed Buildings Institution (PhD Thesis 2015ENMP0033). Paris: Mines ParisTech & Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School.Google Scholar
Colombero, S. & Boxenbaum, E. (2019). Authentication as institutional maintenance work. Journal of Management Studies, 56(2), 408–40.Google Scholar
Council of Europe. (1985). The Grenada Convention. Convention for the Protection of the Architectural Heritage of Europe. Available at: https://coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list/-/conventions/treaty/121Google Scholar
Currie, G., Lockett, A., Finn, R., Martin, G. & Waring, J. (2013). Institutional work to maintain professional power: Recreating the model of medical professionalism. Organization Studies, 33(7), 937–62.Google Scholar
Czarniawska-Joerges, B. (1990). Merchants of Meaning: Management Consulting in the Swedish Public Sector. Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Dacin, T. & Dacin, P. (2008). Traditions as Institutionalized Practice: Implication for Deinstitutionalization. In Greenwood, R., Oliver, C., Suddaby, R. & Sahlin, K. (eds), The Sage Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism (pp. 327–51). London: Sage.Google Scholar
Dacin, T., Munir, K. & Tracey, P. (2010). Formal dining at Cambridge colleges: Linking ritual performance and institutional maintenance. Academy of Management Journal, 53(6), 1393–418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Vaujany, F-X., Adrot, A., Boxenbaum, E. & Leca, B. (2019). Conclusion: Ontological Reflections on the Role of Materiality in Institutional Inquiry. In de Vaujany, F-X, Adrot, A., Boxenbaum, E. & Leca, B. (eds), Materiality in Institutions: Spaces, Embodiment and Technology in Management and Organization (pp. 379–82). London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
de Vaujany, F-X. & Mitev, N. (2016). Introduction au tournant matériel en théories des organisations. In de Vaujany, F-X, Hussenot, A. & Chanlat, J-F (eds), Théories des Organisation: Nouveaux Tournants. Paris: Economica.Google Scholar
Djindjian, F. (2011). Manuel d’archéologie. Méthodes, objets et concepts. Paris: Armand Colin.Google Scholar
Elliott, C. S., Hayward, D. M. & Canon, S. (1998). Institutional framing: Some experimental evidence. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 35(4), 455–64.Google Scholar
Emirbayer, M. & Mische, A. (1998). What is agency? American Journal of Sociology, 103(4), 9621023.Google Scholar
Gagliardi, P. (1990). Artifacts as Pathways and Remains of Organizational Life. In Gagliardi, P. (ed.), Symbols and Artifacts: Views of the Corporate Landscape (pp. 338). New York: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Gieryn, T. F. (2002). What buildings do. Theory and Society, 31(1), 3574.Google Scholar
Glucksmann, M. A. (1998). What a difference a day makes: A theoretical and historical exploration of temporality and gender. Sociology, 32(2), 239–58.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Granqvist, N. & Gustafsson, R. (2016). Temporal institutional work. Academy of Management Journal, 59(3), 1009–35.Google Scholar
Greenwood, R., Oliver, C., Lawrence, T. & Meyer, R. E. (2017). Introduction: Into the Fourth Decade. In Greenwood, R., Oliver, C., Lawrence, T. & Meyer, R. E. (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism (2nd ed., pp. 124). London: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herepath, A. & Kitchener, M. (2016). When small bandages fail: The field-level repair of severe and protracted institutional breaches. Organization Studies, 37(8), 1113–39.Google Scholar
Hladik, M. (2008). Traces et fragments dans l’esthétique japonaise. Paris: Mardaga.Google Scholar
Jones, C., Lee, J. Y. & Lee, T. (2019). Institutionalizing Place: Materiality and Meaning in Boston’s North End. In Haack, P., Sieweke, J. & Wessel, L. (eds), Microfoundations of Institutions. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 65B (pp. 211–39). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing.Google Scholar
Jones, C. & Massa, F. G. (2013). From novel practice to consecrated exemplar: Unity Temple as a case of institutional evangelizing. Organization Studies, 34(8), 1099–136.Google Scholar
Kaplan, S. & Orlikowski, W. J. (2013). Temporal work in strategy making. Organization Science, 24(4), 965–95.Google Scholar
Lawrence, T. B. & Dover, G. (2015). Place and institutional work: Creating housing for the hard-to-house. Administrative Science Quarterly, 60(3), 371410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawrence, T. B., Leca, B. & Zilber, T. B. (2013). Institutional work: Current research, new directions and overlooked issues. Organization Studies, 34(8), 1023–33.Google Scholar
Lawrence, T. B. & Suddaby, R. (2006). Institutions and Institutional Work. In Langley, A. & Tsoukas, H. (eds), The Sage Handbook of Process Organization Studies (pp. 215–54). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Lawrence, T. B., Winn, M. I. & Jennings, P. D. (2001). The temporal dynamics of institutionalization. Academy of Management Review, 26(4), 624–44.Google Scholar
Leblanc, S. (2015). Faut-il reconstruire la flèche de la basilique de Saint-Denis? 20 Minutes, 2878, 12.Google Scholar
Lok, J. & De Rond, M. (2013). On the plasticity of institutions: Containing and restoring practice breakdowns at the Cambridge University Boat Club. Academy of Management Journal, 56(1), 185207.Google Scholar
McDonnell, T. E. (2010). Cultural objects as objects: Materiality, urban space, and the interpretation of AIDS campaigns in Accra, Ghana. American Journal of Sociology, 115(6), 1800–52.Google Scholar
Micelotta, E. R. & Washington, M. (2013). Institutions and maintenance: The repair work of Italian professions. Organization Studies, 34(8), 1137–70.Google Scholar
Monteiro, P. & Nicolini, D. (2015). Recovering materiality in institutional work: Prizes as an assemblage of human and material entities. Journal of Management Inquiry, 24(1), 6181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norberg-Schulz, C. (1980). Genius Loci. Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture. New York: Rizzoli International Publications.Google Scholar
Ocasio, W. C., Mauskapf, M. & Steele, C. (2016). History, society and institutions: The role of collective memory in the emergence and evolution of societal logics. Academy of Management Review, 41(4), 676–99.Google Scholar
Oliver, C. (1991). Strategic responses to institutional processes. Academy of Management Review, 16(1), 145–79.Google Scholar
Orlikowski, W. (1992). The duality of technology: Rethinking the concept of technology in organizations. Organization Science, 3(3), 398427.Google Scholar
Orlikowski, W. (2006). Material knowing: The scaffolding of human knowledgeability. European Journal of Information Systems, 15(5), 460–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orlikowski, W. J. & Yates, J. (2002). It’s about time: Temporal structuring in organizations. Organization Science, 13(6), 684700.Google Scholar
Patriotta, G., Gond, J. P. & Schultz, F. (2011). Controversies, orders of worth, and public justifications. Journal of Management Studies, 48(8), 1804–36.Google Scholar
Perreau, L. (2009). La fortune de Richard Wallace. Paris: JC Lattès.Google Scholar
Pinch, T. (2008). Technology and institutions: Living in a material world. Theory and Society, 37(5), 461–83.Google Scholar
Quinn-Trank, C. Q. & Washington, M. (2009). Maintaining an Institution in a Contested Organizational Field: The Work of the AACSB and Its Constituents. In Lawrence, T. B., Suddaby, R. & Leca, B. (eds), Institutional Work: Actors and Agency in Institutional Studies of Organizations (pp. 236–61). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rathmann, K. (1998). Sustainable Architecture Module: Recycling and Reuse of Building Materials. Ann Arbor, MI: National Pollution Prevention Center for Higher Education.Google Scholar
Raynard, M., Kodeih, F. & Greenwood, R. (2021). Proudly elitist and undemocratic? The distributed maintenance of contested practices. Organization Studies, 42(1), 733.Google Scholar
Reay, T., Golden-Biddle, K. & Germann, K. (2006). Legitimizing a new role: Small wins and microprocesses of change. Academy of Management Journal, 49(5), 977–98.Google Scholar
Riegl, A. ([1903]2001). Le culte moderne des monuments: Son essence et sa genèse (2001). Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
Sahlin, K. & Wedlin, L. (2008). Circulating ideas: Imitation, translation and editing. In Greenwood, R., Oliver, C., Suddaby, R. & Sahlin, K. (eds), The Sage Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism (pp. 218–42). London: Sage.Google Scholar
Schnapp, A., Lehoërff, A., Giligny, F. & Demoule, J. P. (2020). Guide des méthodes de l’archéologie. Paris: La Découverte.Google Scholar
Schultz, M. & Hernes, T. (2013). A temporal perspective on organizational identity. Organization Science, 24(1), 121.Google Scholar
Scott, W. R. (2003). Institutional carriers: Reviewing modes of transporting ideas over time and space and considering their consequences. Industrial and Corporate Change, 12(4), 879–94.Google Scholar
Siebert, S., Wilson, F. & Hamilton, J. R. A. (2017). “Devils may sit here”: The role of enchantment in institutional maintenance. Academy of Management Journal, 60(4), 1607–32.Google Scholar
Siemsen, J. (1997). Sølvgades Skole 150 år i 1997: Tekster og billeder omkring skolen der aldrip gi’rop – især fra de sidste 50 år. København: Sølvgades Skole Publications.Google Scholar
Snow, D. A., Rochford, E. B. Jr., Worden, S. K. & Benford, R. D. (1986). Frame alignment processes, micromobilization, and movement participation. American Sociological Review, 51(4), 464–81.Google Scholar
Suárez, D. (2007). Education professionals and the construction of human rights education. Comparative Education Review, 51(1), 4870.Google Scholar
Suchman, M. C. (2003). The contract as social artifact. Law & Society Review, 37(1), 91142.Google Scholar
Townley, B. (1997). The institutional logic of performance appraisal. Organization Studies, 18(2), 261–85.Google Scholar
Tucker, S. (2006). Cyclical institutions: The case of midwifery care in Ontario, 1800–2005. Working paper. Kingston, Canada: Queen’s University.Google Scholar
Wright, A. L., Zammuto, R. F. & Liesch, P. W. (2017). Maintaining the values of a profession: Institutional work and moral emotions in the emergency department. Academy of Management Journal, 60(1), 200–37.Google Scholar
Zerubavel, Y. (1995). Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Zilber, T. B. (2009). Institutional Maintenance as Narrative Acts. In Lawrence, T. B., Suddaby, R. & Leca, B. (eds), Institutional Work: Actors and Agency in Institutional Studies of Organizations (pp. 205–35). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zilber, T. B. (2011). Institutional multiplicity in practice: A tale of two high-tech conferences in Israel. Organization Science, 22(6), 1539–59.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×