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Institutional Work: Actors and Agency in Institutional Studies of Organizations By Thomas ? Lawrence, Roy Suddaby and Bernard Leca Cambridge University Press, UK, 2009, Pages: 336, Price: $54.93 ISBN978-0-521-51885-0
Academic interest in institutional studies of organization has a long history, starting with classical works of Max Weber, Philip Selznick, etc., in the late 1940s. In last two decades, there has been an upsurge in work on institutional studies of organization with publication of some commendable work (Powell and DiMaggio, 1991; and Greenwood et al, 2008). The initial focus of scholars in institutional theory was on explanation of organizational similarities (isomorphism) in organizational field. In the late 1990, the focus shifted to explaining institutional change due exogenous elements, followed by institutional entrepreneurship and institutional logic. Institutional entrepreneurship aims at explaining an endogenous change to institutions. It thrusts on importance of agency in actors and attempts to resolve the paradox of embedded agency: how can actors change institutions if their actions, intentions, are constrained by the same institution which they wish to change (Holm, 1995; and Seo and Creed, 2002). Institutional entrepreneurship has emphasized on role of actors in creating new institutions. However, in recent years, there has been significant stress on understanding the role of actors in transforming and maintaining institutions. Lawrence and Suddaby (2006) refer to this as institutional work, "the purposive action of individual and organization aimed at creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions" (p. 215). Institutional work has become a bridge between work on institutional entrepreneurship (focusing on creating new institutions) and deinstitutionalization (focusing on death of institutions). Since the foundational work by Lawrence and Suddaby (2006), institutional work has gained attention in academic world of organization studies as evident from flourishing research works shared through academic platform( EGOS1, 2008) Sub theme: 222; EGOS (2012) Sub theme: 163).
This book is a collection of revealing paper on institutional work put together by Lawrence, Suddaby and Leca, to speak on a central issue: how individual actor produce, sustain, and transform institutions while protecting their personal interests? As evident from title, concept of institutional work is the primary theme around which all the papers are written. The book is divided into three sections: introduction, essays on institutional work comprising of four chapters on theory, and studies...