The study of institutional work has emerged as a dynamic research domain within organization studies. In this essay, we situate the papers published in the Special Issue. We first review the evolution of institutional work as a scholarly conversation within organization studies. We then...

Emotion is a critical but relatively unexplored dimension of sensemaking in organizations. Existing models of sensemaking tend to ignore the role of emotion or portray it as an impediment. To address this problem, we explore the role that felt emotion plays in three stages of...

Over the past decade, the study of management and organization theory has experienced a significant ‘turn to work’. This turn to work has not, however, been a return to the study of the forms of work that have been the traditional focus of organizational scholars. Instead, the turn to work...

Recent literature on indigenous entrepreneurship has called for the exploration of the relationship between indigenous culture and entrepreneurship as well as the relationship between indigenous identity and entrepreneurship. In this study, we explore how being an entrepreneur effects the...

The feminist notion of an ethic of care emerged in the 1980s as a powerful alternative to justice as a central orienting value for the development of moral theory, but has been largely overlooked in the literature on care in organizations. We explore how an ethic of care could be enacted in...

Innovation is a critical issue for nonprofit organizations and the ability to innovate over time represents an important, unresolved challenge. In this article, we examine continuous innovation in nonprofits from a political perspective. We explore the role of power in shaping how and whether...

Reports of widespread misconduct in organizations have become sadly commonplace. Sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, accounting fraud in large corporations, and physical and sexual harassment in the military implicate not only the individuals involved, but the organizations and fields in which...

In this paper, we discuss an alternative focus for institutional studies of organization - the study of institutional work. Research on institutional work examines the practices of individual and collective actors aimed at creating, maintaining, and disrupting institutions. Our focus in this...

Institutional theory has energized a large and vibrant academic community, but it is largely unknown to managers and inconsequential with respect to the management of organizations. This is despite what the authors believe is an immense potential practical contribution. In this article, the...