Toward a Multi-Level Theory of Institutional Contestation: Exploring Category Legitimation Across Domains of Institutional Action
Microfoundations of Institutions
ISBN: 978-1-78769-124-7, eISBN: 978-1-78769-123-0
Publication date: 25 November 2019
Abstract
The authors explore how entrepreneurs with limited resources legitimated (or failed to legitimate) a new organizational category in different jurisdictions in Canada despite severe resistance. The authors identify three meso-level domains of institutional action (public, administrative, and legal), where actors intervene to change their macro-institutional environment. The findings suggest that these domains mediate the relationship between micro-level agency and macro-level institutions. The authors describe how macro-level consensus about the category legitimacy emerges through a competition between judgments embedded in different discourses and how a particular discourse attains validity, forcing other actors to change their initial unfavorable legitimacy judgments and recognize the category’s legitimacy.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
We are very grateful to Steve Maguire, Jan Jorgensen, and Robert David (McGill University), Ann Langley (HEC Montreal), Michael Pratt (Boston College), and the members of the Montreal Organization Writing Workshop (MOWW) community in Montreal for their feedback on the earlier versions of this chapter. We are particularly grateful to John Kiedrowski (Compliance Strategy Group) for indispensable help and advice during the data collection for this project. This research was supported in part by a grant from the Research Office of HEC Montreal, Canada.
Citation
Bitektine, A. and Nason, R. (2019), "Toward a Multi-Level Theory of Institutional Contestation: Exploring Category Legitimation Across Domains of Institutional Action", Haack, P., Sieweke, J. and Wessel, L. (Ed.) Microfoundations of Institutions (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 65A), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 43-65. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X2019000065A008
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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