Generating theory from research settings requires researchers to adeptly engage with the social intricacies of the field. They need to develop a contextual understanding by gaining in-depth insights into the setting, while retaining a critical distance from it. Researchers must practice this...

Organizations face institutional complexity whenever they confront incompatible prescriptions from multiple institutional logics. Our interest is in how plural institutional logics, refracted through field-level structures and processes, are experienced within organizations and how...

This paper examines the relationship between the institutional environment and sustained corporate illegality. We find that cognitive assumptions generate expectations that can, under specific circumstances, induce organizations to amplify illegal actions and that serve to lessen regulatory...

How organizations cope with multiple and sometimes conflicting institutional demands is an increasingly familiar yet little understood question. This paper examines how four French business schools responded to demands that they internationalize their management education whilst retaining their...

The general study of organizational change and the specific development of the concepts of transformation and transition has come about in a way which is typical of organization theory. On the one hand there were increasing theoretical and methodological criticisms of the 1970s...

Max Weber’s influence upon the study of organizations has been profound, perhaps unrivaled. But his contemporary relevance is less certain. This special issue celebrates the achievements of Weber and, at the same time, reflects on his current influence. Contributors vary in their assessment...

The uniqueness of professional service firms (PSFs) has been well established. Accounting, law, engineering, and management consulting firms are known to differ significantly from both traditional manufacturing and service organizations in their organizational and managerial arrangements. Their...

Three decades! Founded in 1980, Organization Studies is, today, an established and important fixture of the intellectual landscape. For some, it seems only yesterday that the journal made its initial, bold appearance as the official publication of EGOS, itself a (then) relatively recent...

This special issue had it roots in a symposium organized by Tammar Zilber and Roy Suddaby for the Academy of Management 2003 annual meetings in Seattle. The symposium was titled "Reclaiming the Symbolic in Institutional Theory" and represented an effort to refocus research attention on the...

This double volume presents a collection of 22 papers on how institutions matter to socio-economic life. In particular, the papers delve deeply into the practical impact an institutional approach enables, as well as how such research has the potential to influence policies relevant to critical...