From Institutional Contradictions to Organizational Transformation

Institutionalists have proposed different approaches to how organizations manage in-stitutional contradictions. In particular, they have suggested that competing institutional logics within organizations are either managed through prioritization, separation, or hybridization of practices. Yet, why and how organizations respond to institutional contradictions by a quan-tum leap and change the organizational gestalt or paradigm has been an underexplored issue. Therefore, we addressed this question in our research of a unique university merger, in which two very different institutional logics collided in practice. The findings show that after years of failed attempts with a hybridization and marginalization approach, the organization re-sponded by a radical gestalt change. This presents a major deviation from existing evidence and the prevailing debate in the literature. We suggest an institutional model of organizational transformation as a fourth approach filling a blind spot in the literature and anchoring a new end of the spectrum of organizational responses to institutional contradictions.