Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T21:26:59.705Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Co-existing institutional logics and agency among top-level public servants: A praxeological approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2015

Toke Bjerregaard*
Affiliation:
Department of Management, Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark

Abstract

While institutional organization research to some extent has neglected the micro agency of organization members, parts of the strategy-as-practice research have tended to bracket off wider societal environments shaping the practices-in-use of top-level strategy practitioners. This article attempts to address parts of this void. This study examines the agency exerted by top-level public servants through their everyday strategy and policy work in face of co-existing logics of public administration. The findings illustrate how their action strategies span from more passive strategies of coping with coexisting logics of administration to more skilled agency of combining logics aimed at enhancing their opportunity and action space. The study suggests that the interplay between co-existing institutional logics, action strategies and the practical skills of top-level public servants provides the basis for both coping and more proactive strategies in pluralistic public administrations. Findings illustrate the role of public servants' practical sense of realizable opportunities that inform such strategies of handling co-existing institutional logics. Implications for institutional studies of organizations are outlined.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management 2011

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

Baez, B., & Abolafia, M. Y. (2002). Bureaucratic entrepreneurship and institutional change: A sense-making approach. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 12(4), 525552.Google Scholar
Barley, S. R., & Kunda, G. (2001). Bringing work back in. Organization Science, 12(1), 7695.Google Scholar
Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1967). The social construction of reality. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Binder, A. (2007). For love and money: Organizations' creative responses to multiple environmental logics. Theory and Society, 36(6), 547571.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1971). Une interprétation de la théorie de la religion Selon Max Weber. Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 12(1), 321.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1973). Three forms of theoretical knowledge. Social Science Information, 12(1), 5380.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Brower, R. S., & Abolafia, M. Y. (1996). Procedural entrepreneurship: Enacting alternative channels to administrative effectiveness. The American Review of Public Administration, 26(3), 287308.Google Scholar
Brown, M. K. (1981). Working the street. Police discretion and the dilemmas of reform. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Campbell, J. L., Hall, J. A., & Pedersen, O. K. (2006). National identity and the varieties of capitalism: The Danish experience. København: Djøf Publishing.Google Scholar
Carter, C., Clegg, S., & Kornberger, M. (2008). Critical strategy: Revising strategy as practice. Strategic Organization, 6(1), 8399.Google Scholar
Chia, R. (2004). S-as-P: Reflections on the research agenda. European Management Review, 1(1), 2934.Google Scholar
DiMaggio, P. J. (1997). Culture and cognition. Annual Review of Sociology, 23(1), 263287.Google Scholar
DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1991). Introduction. In Powell, W. W. & Dimaggio, P. J. (Eds.), The new institutionalism in organizational analysis (pp. 138). Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Esping-Andersen, G. (1996). After the golden age? Welfare state dilemmas in a global economy. In Esping-Andersen, G., (Ed.), Welfare states in transition: National adaptations in global economies. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage, udgivet i samarbejde med UNRISD.Google Scholar
Esping-Andersen, G. (2000). Social foundations of postindustrial economies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Evens, T. M. S., & Handelman, D. (2006). The Manchester school: Practice and ethnographic praxis in anthropology, New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Flick, U. (2007). Triangulation revisited: Strategy of validation or alternative? Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 22(2), 175197.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. (1979). Central problems in social theory: Action, structure, and contradiction in social analysis. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1971). The presentation of self in everyday life. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, M. (1992). The social production of indifference: Exploring the symbolic roots of western bureaucracy. Oxford, New York: Berg.Google Scholar
Holy, L., & Stuchlik, M. (1983). Actions, norms and representations. Foundations of anthropological inquiry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hood, C. (1991). A public management for all seasons. Public Administration, 69(1), 319.Google Scholar
Jarzabkowski, P., & Spee, S. P. (2009). Strategy as practice: A review and future research directions. International Journal of Management Reviews, 11(1), 6995.Google Scholar
Jarzabkowski, P., & Whittington, R. (2008). Hard to disagree, mostly. Strategic Organization, 6(1), 101106.Google Scholar
Joas, H. (1996). The creativity of action. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Junker, B. H. (1960). Field work: An introduction to the social sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kellogg, K. C. (2006). Institutional coupling: The mechanisms of real organizational change in response to institutional pressures (pp. 119). American Sociological Association Annual Meeting.Google Scholar
Kraatz, M. S., & Block, E. S. (2008). Organizational implications of institutional pluralism. In Greenwood, R., Oliver, C., Suddaby, R., & Sahlin-Anderson, K. (Eds.), Handbook of organizational institutionalism (pp. 243275). London: Sage.Google Scholar
LeCompte, M. D., Schenshul, J. J., Week, M., & Singer, M. (1999). Researcher roles and research partnership, Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.Google Scholar
March, J. G., & Olson, J. P. (1984). The new institutionalism: Organizational factors in political life. The American Political Science Review, 78(1), 734749.Google Scholar
Maxwell, J. A. (2005). Qualitative research design: An interactive approach. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Merton, R. K., & Kendall, P. L. (1946). The focused interview. American Journal of Sociology, 51(6), 541557.Google Scholar
Meyer, J. W., & Rowan, B. (1991). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony. In Powell, W. W. & Dimaggio, P. J. (Eds.), The new institutionalism in organizational analysis (pp. 4162). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Meyer, R. E., & Hammerschmid, G. (2006). Changing institutional logics and executive identities: A managerial challenge to public administration in Austria. American Behavioral Scientist, 49(7), 10001014.Google Scholar
Miles, M., & Huberman, M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Müller, H. P. (2006). Action Et structure: La praxéologie de pierre bourdieu. In Müller, H.-P. & Sintomer, Y. (Eds.), Pierre bourdieu, théorie et pratique. Perspectives Franco-Allemandes (pp. 4762). Paris: La Découverte.Google Scholar
OECD. (2001). Devolution and globalisation. Implications for local decision-makers. Paris: OECD.Google Scholar
OECD. (2007). Competitive cities: A new entrepreneurial paradigm in spatial development. Paris: OECD.Google Scholar
Oliver, C. (1991). Strategic responses to institutional processes. The Academy of Management Review, 16(1), 145180.Google Scholar
Prasad, P. (2005). Crafting qualitative research: Working in the postpositivist tradition. London: M.E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Rothenberg, S. (2007). Environmental managers as institutional entrepreneurs: The influence of institutional and technical pressures on waste management. Journal of Business Research, 60(7), 749757.Google Scholar
Sassen, S. (2006). Cities in a world economy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.Google Scholar
Schatzki, T. R. (2008). Social practices: A Wittgensteinian approach to human activity and the social. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sørensen, E. (2006). Metagovernance: The changing role of politicians in processes of democratic governance. The American Review of Public Administration, 36(1), 98114.Google Scholar
Spradley, J. P. (1980). Participant observation. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Stephens, J. D. (1996). The Scandinavian welfare states: Achievements, crisis, and prospects. In Esping-Andersen, G. (Ed.), Welfare states in transition: National adaptations in global economies (pp. 116140). Thousand Oaks, New Delhi, London: Sage, udgivet i samarbejde med UNRISD.Google Scholar
Taylor, S. J., & Bogdan, R. (1984). Introduction to qualitative research methods: The search for meanings. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Thornton, P. H., & Ocasio, W. (2008). Institutional logics. In Greenwood, R., Oliver, C., Suddaby, R., & Anderson, K.-S. (Eds.), The Sage handbook of organizational institutionalism. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Townley, B. (2002). The role of competing rationalities in institutional change. Academy of Management Journal, 45(1), 163179.Google Scholar
Vaughan, D. (2008). Bourdieu and organizations: The empirical challenge. Theory and Society, 37(1), 6581.Google Scholar
Velsen, J. V. (1967). The extended-case method and situational analysis. In Epstein, A. L. (Ed.), The craft of social anthropology (pp. 129152). London: Tavistock Publications.Google Scholar
Villadsen, S. (1996). Local welfare systems in Denmark in a period of political reconstruction: A Scandinavian perspective. In Greve, B. (Ed.), Comparative welfare systems: The Scandinavian model in a period of change (pp. 2944). London: Macmillan Press.Google Scholar
Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992). Towards a social praxeology: The structure and logic of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology. In Bourdieu, P. & Wacquant, L. J. D. (Eds.), An invitation to reflexive sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Weber, M. (1978). Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Whyte, W. F. (1993). Street corner society. The social structure of an Italian slum. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar