R.J. Neale, C.H. Tilston, K. Gregson and T. Stagg
Describes an in‐depth study of the attitudes to food, foodconsumption patterns and health of young vegetarian women (aged 15‐30).Studies women as the ratio of female to male…
Abstract
Describes an in‐depth study of the attitudes to food, food consumption patterns and health of young vegetarian women (aged 15‐30). Studies women as the ratio of female to male vegetarians is 2:1. Self‐completed questionnaires formed the basis of the study and provided information on length of time and degree of commitment to vegetarianism, affect on social relationships, and moral and health factors and food factors influencing the decision to become vegetarian. Food factors appeared to be less distinctive than moral and health factors. Concludes that more research is required, particularly into the strict vegan section of the population.
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Ali Aslan Gümüsay, Mia Raynard, Oana Albu, Michael Etter and Thomas Roulet
Digital technologies, and the affordances they provide, can shape institutional processes in significant ways. In the last decade, social media and other digital platforms have…
Abstract
Digital technologies, and the affordances they provide, can shape institutional processes in significant ways. In the last decade, social media and other digital platforms have redefined civic engagement by enabling new ways of connecting, collaborating, and mobilizing. In this article, we examine how technological affordances can both enable and hinder institutional processes through visibilization – which we define as the enactment of technological features to foreground and give voice to particular perspectives and discourses while silencing others. We study such dynamics by examining #SchauHin, an activist campaign initiated in Germany to shine a spotlight on experiences of daily racism. Our findings show how actors and counter-actors differentially leveraged the technological features of two digital platforms to shape the campaign. Our study has implications for understanding the role of digital technologies in institutional processes as well as the interplay between affordances and visibility in efforts to deinstitutionalize discriminatory practices and institutions.
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Lee C. Jarvis, Rebekah Eden, April L. Wright and Andrew Burton-Jones
Digital transformations represent an increasingly salient empirical phenomena for institutionalists studying the processes by which institutions evolve, erode, or otherwise…
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Digital transformations represent an increasingly salient empirical phenomena for institutionalists studying the processes by which institutions evolve, erode, or otherwise change. Yet, there have been few meaningful attempts to engage with insights from the information systems (IS) literature, despite digital innovation and diffusion falling squarely within its domain. This essay makes an initial attempt at integration by offering a two-by-two framework which crosses salient theoretical categories within the IS and institutional literatures. From the former, we draw on concepts of system acceptance and resistance, and from the latter, we draw on concepts of institutional maintenance and change. Each quadrant in our framework represents user responses happening because of, in reaction to, or toward various institutional dynamics. We illustrate each quadrant with data collected as part of a study of digital transformation in the field of public healthcare in Australia. We use our illustrative case to open up research questions which researchers might use to frame their own studies of digital transformations as a form of institutional change. We conclude with a discussion of what other theoretical advances or insights might be yielded from greater collaboration between institutionalists and IS scholars. This essay contributes to the nascent study of digital transformations as a form of institutional change through examining how complementary concepts of the IS and institutional literatures might be used simultaneously to understand the intersection of digital innovation and diffusion and the institutional arrangements governing the fields which they change.
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Robyn King, April L. Wright, David Smith, Alex Chaudhuri and Leah Thompson
We bring together the institutional theory literature on institutional logics and the information systems (IS) literature that conceptualizes a relational view of affordances to…
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We bring together the institutional theory literature on institutional logics and the information systems (IS) literature that conceptualizes a relational view of affordances to explore the digital changes unfolding in the delivery of professional services. Through a qualitative inductive study of the development of an app led by a clinician manager in an Australian hospital, we investigate how multiple institutional logics shape the design of affordances when an organization develops new digital technologies for frontline professional work. Our findings show how a billing function was designed into the app by the development team over four episodes to afford potential physician users with billing usability, billing acceptability, billing authority and billing discretion. These affordances emerged as different elements of professional, state, managerial and market logics became activated, interpreted, evaluated, negotiated and designed into the digital technology through the team’s interactions with the clinician manager, a hybrid professional, during the app development process. Our findings contribute new insight to the affordance-based logics perspective by deepening understanding of the process through which multiple institutional logics play out in the design of affordances of digital technology. We also highlight the role of hybrid professionals in this digital transformation of frontline professional work.
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Stuart Middleton, Gemma L. Irving and April L. Wright
The authors contribute to scholarly understanding of the interplay between macro-level institutions and micro-level action by focusing attention on the ways the power of…
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The authors contribute to scholarly understanding of the interplay between macro-level institutions and micro-level action by focusing attention on the ways the power of institutions works through mundane organizational spaces to constrain individuals as they interact with organizations. The authors explore these macro- and micro-connections between institutions and organizational spaces through a qualitative inductive study of an emergency department in a public hospital in Australia. Analyzing observational and interview data related to a waiting room and a corridor, their findings show how the systemic power of the state and the medical profession impacts micro-level action through organizational spaces. The authors find that the medical profession exerted power in a system of domination over marginalized patients through the waiting room as an exclusion space. At the same time, the state exerted discipline power over professional subjects through the corridor as a surveillance space. Individual resistance to institutional power over the ED was controlled by policing deviance in the surveillance space and ejecting resisters to the exclusion space. Their findings contribute to the literature by opening up new insight into how mundane organizational spaces convey institutional power by dominating and disciplining micro-level actions.
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Rebecca Bednarek, Miguel Pina e Cunha, Jonathan Schad and Wendy Smith
Over the past decades, scholars advanced foundational insights about paradox in organization theory. In this double volume, we seek to expand upon these insights through…
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Over the past decades, scholars advanced foundational insights about paradox in organization theory. In this double volume, we seek to expand upon these insights through interdisciplinary theorizing. We do so for two reasons. First, we think that now is a moment to build on those foundations toward richer, more complex insights by learning from disciplines outside of organization theory. Second, as our world increasingly faces grand challenges, scholars turn to paradox theory. Yet as the challenges become more complex, authors turn to other disciplines to ensure the requisite complexity of our own theories. To advance these goals, we invited scholars with knowledge in paradox theory to explore how these ideas could be expanded by outside disciplines. This provides a both/and opportunity for paradox theory: both learning from outside disciplines beyond existing boundaries and enriching our insights in organization scholarship. The result is an impressive collection of papers about paradox theory that draws from four outside realms – the realm of belief, the realm of physical systems, the realm of social structures, and the realm of expression. In this introduction, we expand on why paradox theory is ripe for interdisciplinary theorizing, explore the benefits of doing so, and introduce the papers in this double volume.
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Logan Crace, Joel Gehman and Michael Lounsbury
Reality breakdowns generate reflexivity and awareness of the constructed nature of social reality. These pivotal moments can motivate institutional inhabitants to either modify…
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Reality breakdowns generate reflexivity and awareness of the constructed nature of social reality. These pivotal moments can motivate institutional inhabitants to either modify their social worlds or reaffirm the status quo. Thus, reality breakdowns are the initial points at which actors can conceive of new possibilities for institutional arrangements and initiate change processes to realize them. Studying reality breakdowns enables scholars to understand not just how institutional change occurs, but also why it does or does not do so. In this paper, we investigate how institutional inhabitants responded to a reality breakdown that occurred during our ethnography of collegial governance in a large North American university that was undergoing a strategic change initiative. Our findings suggest that there is a consequential process following reality breakdowns whereby institutional inhabitants construct the severity of these events. In our context, institutional inhabitants first attempted to restore order to their social world by reaffirming the status quo; when their efforts failed, they began to formulate alternative possibilities. Simultaneously, they engaged in a distributed sensemaking process whereby they diminished and reoriented necessary changes, ultimately inhibiting the formulation of these new possibilities. Our findings confirm reality breakdowns and institutional awareness as potential drivers of institutional change and complicate our understanding of antecedent microprocesses that may forestall the initiation of change efforts.
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This paper aims to explore (a) the dynamics of place and space in an institutional setting and (b) institutional work done in different spaces of the same place.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore (a) the dynamics of place and space in an institutional setting and (b) institutional work done in different spaces of the same place.
Design/methodology/approach
Traditional ethnographic methods (participant-observation, interviews and artefacts) were used over the course of 12 months of fieldwork in a multi-organizational video game development space.
Findings
The paper presents two main findings. First, the authors show how the place was a dynamic rainbow constellation and manifested as different spaces over time and for different actors. The authors describe the spaces based on existing literature (accelerator, experimental, incubator or coworking space) or inductively (atrium and hybrid). Second, the authors show how institutional work changed depending on the spatial conceptions of the institutional place. In particular, the authors show dynamic rainbow constellation of fluid spaces raises different forms of institutional policing work (self, backroom, spectacle, tangential and preventative) and the conditions under which institutional policing work is subtly fluid and takes form, but also changes.
Originality/value
Significant contributions are made to understanding how actors work at forming a rainbow constellation ring of fluid labels and spaces of a place. This paper explicates and amplifies the forms of institutional policing work, providing a novel case example of that social interaction.
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The purpose of this paper is to address the critique of researchers, who question the effectiveness and sustainability of mentoring as a continuing professional development and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to address the critique of researchers, who question the effectiveness and sustainability of mentoring as a continuing professional development and learning (CPDL) process. Where a lack of awareness exists surrounding the potential benefits of mentoring for the mentor, this paper investigates whether engaging in and with mentoring through a mentoring community of practice (M-CoP) assists mentors to accrue and realise the benefits of engagement. A relationship will be drawn between the community of practice (CoP) dimensions as outlined by Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner (2015): domain, practice and community, and the perceived benefits accrued for mentors will be reported.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative approach was taken, using a participatory action learning action research strategy. In total, 12 mentors came together to form a developing M-CoP. They attended four M-CoP workshops where they grew as mentors, through the three dimensions of a CoP: domain, practice and community. Workshops were audio visually recorded and observed. Further data were gathered through an M-CoP questionnaire, pre-workshop questions, M-CoP artefacts, stimulus recall, reflective journals, reflective journey plans and extended focus group discussions. Respondent validation, inter-rater and intra-observer reliability were used. Data were coded manually and using NVivo-10 software.
Findings
Many of the benefits reported were directly linked to participants’ engagement in and with the three M-CoP dimensions: domain, practice and community. Such benefits related to mentor identity, support and solidarity, engagement and interaction, sharing “for” and learning “from” other mentors, and knowledge expansion and boundary spanning. Participants reported that engaging in and with mentor education through an M-CoP was an effective CPDL process, which was beneficial for them as developing mentors.
Research limitations/implications
The sample size was limited, based in one country and focussed upon one subject specialism. Such reported benefits need to be disseminated in order to raise the awareness of policy makers, teacher education institution managers and teacher educators, teachers and school leaders of the benefits of engaging in mentoring CPDL through the process of M-CoP engagement.
Practical implications
The findings from this study can be used to inform policies related to the continuum of teacher education. A recommendation is made for policy makers, teacher education institution managers, school leaders and CPDL service providers to facilitate the development of M-CoPs and to support their growth. It is also suggested that government departments of education and professional standards bodies account for the resourcing of such work in the design and implementation phase of school placement developments.
Originality/value
This paper closes the following gaps in the literature: CPDL benefits of engaging in and with an M-CoP for the mentor, the relationship between CPDL benefits and CoP dimensions and the development of M-CoPs in the given socio-cultural, historical and economic context of Ireland’s teacher education system and those of similar contexts.
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Assesses how the mainstream availability and acceptability of vegetarian food has impacted on the organised vegetarian movement in the UK. Presents data collected during an…
Abstract
Assesses how the mainstream availability and acceptability of vegetarian food has impacted on the organised vegetarian movement in the UK. Presents data collected during an ethnographic case study to show the dilemmas facing the leading UK vegetarian organisation during the mid‐1990s. In order to understand these dilemmas distinguishes between vegetarian food and the ideology of vegetarianism, using existing evidence about variability in diets, motives and organisational politics. When reflecting on the implications of the case study suggests that mainstream acceptance is a double‐edged sword that facilitates the adoption of the diet but threatens the moral foundations of the ideology.