Institutional Logic Re-Emergence After Dormancy: Regenerative Institutional Change In Dutch Beer Brewing

• In Event: 373 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Paper Sessions. Institutional Logics and Institutional Complexity

Abstract

Whereas institutional theorists typically point to exogenous factors to explain change, this paper forwards an internal structuralist view of institutional change by describing how mature organizational fields may experience regenerative institutional change through the re-emergence of dormant institutional logics. To this end, we report on an in-depth qualitative study of the Dutch beer-brewing field. We describe how logics associated with the professions, family, community and religion became dormant during the 20th century with increasing dominance of market and corporate logics. We find, however, that these logics did not disappear from the field but continued to be dormantly embodied by marginalized actor groups. The slumbering maintenance of these logics was facilitated by the presence of “cultural detritus” left behind by ancestral organizations. We show how these carriers of dormant logics were important structural enablers in a process of institutional regeneration during which alternative logics were re-awakened, re-furbished and re-manifested. In particular, we show how, during this tripartite process, various marginalized actors derived impetus from the discovery, reinterpretation and recycling of cultural detritus in their off-path organizational activities. These findings advance the institutional logics perspective and have important implications for research on renewal processes in mature organizational fields.

Authors

• Jochem Kroezen, University of Cambridge

• Pursey Heugens, Erasmus University