Business Faculty Publications

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-1-2013

Publication Title

Journal of Management Studies

Keywords

institutional change; institutional work; logics; organization; pharmaceutical marketing; professional work; role enactment

Disciplines

Business Administration, Management, and Operations | Organizational Behavior and Theory

Abstract

Integrating institutional and role theories, this paper develops a Logics–Roles– Action (LRA) framework for understanding how for-profit organizations structure institutional work to managerially control the work of professionals they employ. Structurally, this institutional work involves three elements: (1) internalizing pluralistic logics (logics); (2) institutionalizing distinct roles embedded in these logics (roles); and (3) scripting goal-oriented role enactment plans (action). An empirical examination of the LRA framework in the pharmaceutical industry evidences four distinct organizational strategies that script role enactments of sales professionals in their interactions with physicians. Each strategy is intended to reaffirm prevailing institutional logics, but eventually backfires by disrupting the very institutional structures that it seeks to maintain and replicate. We show that this disruptive effect is mediated by changes in the social knowledge of institutional work. We close with theoretical and managerial implications for organizational structuring of institutional work and dynamics of institutional change.

DOI

10.1111/joms.12022

Version

Postprint

Volume

50

Issue

5

Download

Share

COinS