Being, Doing, and Creating Community: Social Exchange and the Microfoundations of Institutional Logics.

• In Event: 466 - Regular Session. Organizations and Communities

Abstract

A key catalyst in the reorientation of institutional theory towards microfoundations and cross-level change has been the institutional logics perspective. However disciplinary boundaries have resulted in a model heavily influenced by symbolic interaction and, simultaneously, the omission of social exchange perspectives, despite the benefits that the theoretical integration of sociological approaches to social exchange. These include furthering our understanding of the microfoundations of institutions, conceptualizing processes of institutional reproduction, and theorizing institutional effects. I demonstrate these benefits using a community supported agriculture (CSA) organization as a theory-building case. I show how the community institutional logic, accessible to members via the CSA’s organizational identity, reproduces itself by supporting cognitive and affective outcomes conducive to organizational identification and positive group affect. This happens both because the community logic makes cohesion-compatible forms of social exchange happen more often, and because the community logic serves as a sensemaking resource that allows members to reframe cohesion-incompatible forms of exchange in cohesion-compatible ways.

Author

• Melissa Fletcher Pirkey, Emory University