Joel B. Thornton and Elaine Thornton
This study aims to examine the content of, and the extent to which, the 50 state governments make online spending data available to citizens. Additionally, it seeks to analyze the…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine the content of, and the extent to which, the 50 state governments make online spending data available to citizens. Additionally, it seeks to analyze the typical access points available for searching financial transparency websites and to evaluate each for the presence of learning aids to assist average citizens in deciphering the data provided.
Design/methodology/approach
A content analysis of 50 state government financial transparency websites was conducted to determine access points available for searching and the presence of learning aids and explanatory materials to facilitate citizen understanding of government spending.
Findings
The study results revealed that, despite state government's efforts to provide increased access to financial information, little has been done to assist in improving citizens' skill in using the information and making it more understandable.
Practical implications
Librarians can play an integral role in assisting average citizens in navigating and understanding state government financial transparency websites.
Originality/value
This study demonstrates the importance of including learning aids on state government financial transparency websites and highlights the role that information professionals can play in assisting citizens with website navigation and data interpretation.
Details
Keywords
Christopher W. J. Steele and Timothy R. Hannigan
Talk of “macrofoundations” helps foreground the constitutive and contextualizing powers of institutions – dynamics that are inadvertently obscured by the imagery of…
Abstract
Talk of “macrofoundations” helps foreground the constitutive and contextualizing powers of institutions – dynamics that are inadvertently obscured by the imagery of microfoundations. Highlighting these aspects of institutions in turn opens intriguing lines of inquiry into institutional reproduction and change, lived experience of institutions, and tectonic shifts in institutional configurations. However, there is a twist: taking these themes seriously ultimately challenges any naïve division of micro and macro, and undermines the claim of either to a genuinely foundational role in social analysis. The authors propose an alternative “optometric” imagery – positioning the micro and the macro as arrays of associated lenses, which bring certain things into focus at the cost of others. The authors argue that this imagery should not only encourage analytic reflexivity (“a more optometric institutionalism”) but also draw attention to the use of such lenses in everyday life, as an underexplored but critical phenomenon for institutional theory and research (“an institutionalist optometry”).
Details
Keywords
Drawing on close readings of Schatzki and Friedland, this paper explores the nexus of practice, logics, and values, and especially the implications of practice-driven…
Abstract
Drawing on close readings of Schatzki and Friedland, this paper explores the nexus of practice, logics, and values, and especially the implications of practice-driven institutionalism for the concept of values and vice versa. In essence, the article searches for values in practice-driven institutionalism and articulates how they might be found, deploying practice theory, institutional logics, and values work as guides. The article’s core argument is that both practice theory and institutional logics ascribe an important conceptual role to values, but neither has developed a theory of values that is wholly compatible with the onto-epistemological commitments of practice-driven institutionalism. The article introduces burgeoning scholarship on values work and argues that this approach offers a bridge between practice theory and institutional theory and, by extension, provides conceptual resources and an important research lacuna for those interested in practice-driven institutionalism.
Details
Keywords
Christopher W. J. Steele, Timothy R. Hannigan, Vern L. Glaser, Madeline Toubiana and Joel Gehman
The concept of institution has been used by scholars from across a number of disciplines to explain a wide variety of phenomena. However, the philosophical roots of this concept…
Abstract
The concept of institution has been used by scholars from across a number of disciplines to explain a wide variety of phenomena. However, the philosophical roots of this concept have not been well examined, nor have implications for contemporary institutional analysis been fully appreciated. Returning to the works of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty reveals a depth of thinking that has otherwise been overlooked by institutional theorists. In particular, the author’s analysis reveals two critical insights. First, whereas organizational scholars have closely linked the concepts of institution and taken-for-grantedness, these two concepts were originally understood to be phenomenologically distinct. Second, a detailed examination of Merleau-Ponty’s later work poses the concept of flesh – the twining of the visible and the invisible – as the basis for the interplay of institutions. In turn, the idea of flesh as the foundation of institution invites a more radical reimagining of the growing bifurcation between microfoundations and macrofoundations.
Details
Keywords
Isabel Brüggemann, Jochem Kroezen and Paul Tracey
This study gives insights into how marginalized logics evolve after having been replaced by a new dominant logic. In light of the case of UK trade book publishing where an…
Abstract
This study gives insights into how marginalized logics evolve after having been replaced by a new dominant logic. In light of the case of UK trade book publishing where an editorial logic persisted and morphed after the increasing commercialization of the field – epitomized by the proliferation of so-called “factory fiction” – the authors identify three generative paths of marginalized logic evolution: preservation, purification and radicalization. The authors show how these paths hinge on the activities of three groups of actors who resist conforming to a dominant logic. The findings of this study advance scholars’ understanding of the historical evolution of institutional logics, but also remind them that the acts of resistance are typically embedded in macro-level dynamics related to broader institutional processes. In particular, this study sheds light on the different ways in which acts of resistance may be structured by actors’ experience of friction between competing institutional logics.
Details
Keywords
Joining recent calls to focus our attention on how institutional logics work on the ground, I offer a critique of current studies of institutional logics that often offer a macro…
Abstract
Joining recent calls to focus our attention on how institutional logics work on the ground, I offer a critique of current studies of institutional logics that often offer a macro and reified depictions thereof. I suggest that to fully appreciate how institutions matter, we need to complement these studies with a research program that is based on a constructivist ontology, ethnographic methods of inquiry, and use of theories of action. I exemplify this emerging research agenda, and discuss its broader analytical and empirical implications.
Details
Keywords
Mhamed Biygautane, Evelyn Micelotta, Claudia Gabbioneta and Giulia Cappellaro
Research on institutional logics has missed the opportunity to understand how and why societies may fundamentally differ in their material and symbolic systems. In this chapter…
Abstract
Research on institutional logics has missed the opportunity to understand how and why societies may fundamentally differ in their material and symbolic systems. In this chapter, the authors offer a qualitative examination of the implementation of infrastructure public–private partnership (PPP) projects in the Arab state of Qatar. The authors illustrate how the macrofoundations of Qatari society are rooted in the notion of tribe, an inter-institutional system under which the intertwined institutional orders of the state, the market, and the family have historically developed and operated. Their study sheds light on how these macrofoundations shape the processes and mechanisms that underpin the resistance to the introduction of innovative organizational forms. The chapter makes two contributions. First, it identifies how “foreign” organizational forms rooted in Western institutional orders trigger adverse reactions from societies characterized by different institutional orders. Second, it demonstrates the challenge of implementing PPPs in an institutional context that is unfavorable to them and where actors seek to preserve the supremacy of the extant inter-institutional system.
Details
Keywords
Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some…
Abstract
Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.
Details
Keywords
Joel Gehman, Michael Lounsbury and Royston Greenwood
This double volume presents a collection of 23 papers on how institutions matter to socio-economic life. The papers delve deeply into the practical impact an institutional…
Abstract
This double volume presents a collection of 23 papers on how institutions matter to socio-economic life. 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 institutional changes unfolding in the world today. In Volume 48A, the focus is on the micro foundations of institutional impacts. In Volume 48B, the focus is on the macro consequences of institutional arrangements. Our introduction provides an overview to the two volumes, identifies points of contact between the papers, and briefly summarizes each contribution. We close by noting avenues for future research on how institutions matter. Overall, the volumes provide a cross-section of cutting edge institutional thought and empirical research, highlighting a variety of fruitful directions for knowledge accumulation and development.