ABSTRACT
Institutional complexity, or pluralism, refers to a situation where new institutional arrangements develop alongside old ones without pushing the latter underground (Reay and Hinings 2009; Kraatz and Block 2008; Greenwood et al. 2011). Instead, organizations experience multiple and often conflicting institutional logics. Logics are the rules, principles, and belief systems that guide and shape the behaviors, interests, identities, and values of individuals in a particular organizational field (Thornton and Ocasio 2008). Faced with multiple logics, organizations are compelled to simultaneously abide by different “rules of the game” (Kraatz and Block 2008: 243). While long tacit in institutional research, the notion of institutional complexity has only recently received empirical attention, demonstrating the coexistence of multiple logics in a given organizational field (e.g., Reay and Hinings 2009; Meyer and Höllerer 2010). Most empirical studies that recognize the multiplicity of logics are situated at the field level and have focused on the conditions that promote the diffusion and persistence of multiple logics at that level (see Greenwood et al. 2011 for a review). In contrast, very few empirical studies have explored how organizations actually cope with institutional complexity arising from incompatible logics. Thus, there have recently been calls for research that examines “how individual organizations process that complexity” by looking “inside the organization” (Greenwood et al. 2010: 16).
