Research on institutional complexity has overlooked the fact that moral judgements are likely involved when individuals face a plurality of logics within organizations. To analyse the moral microfoundations of institutional complexity, we build on Boltanski and Thévenot’s economies of worth framework and explore how individuals produce moral judgement in response to the institutional complexity triggered by a major shift in the sustainability strategy within an oil sands company. Fifty-two interviews with employees, managers and executives reveal how actors rely on four types of justification that combine different moral principles and related objects with the aim of either forming (sheltering and solidifying work) or challenging (fragilizing and deconstructing work) a new compromise with regard to sustainability within the organization. Our results show how the economies of worth framework can enrich institutional complexity theory by bringing morality back into the analysis as a core dimension of inhabited institutions while advancing the microanalysis of compromise-making around sustainability in organization studies.
AlvessonM. (2003). Beyond neopositivists, romantics, and localists: A reflexive approach to interviews in organizational research. Academy of Management Review, 28, 13–33.
2.
ArendtH. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. New York: Viking Press.
3.
BarleyS. R. (2008). Coalface institutionalism. In GreenwoodR.OliverC.SahlinK.SuddabyR. (Eds.), The Sage handbook of organizational institutionalism (pp. 491–518). London: SAGE Publications.
4.
BattilanaJ.DoradoS. (2010). Building sustainable hybrid organizations: The case of commercial microfinance organizations. Academy of Management Journal, 53, 1419–1440.
5.
BesharovM.SmithW. (2014). Multiple institutional logics in organizations: Explaining their varied nature and implications. Academy of Management Review, 39, 364–381.
6.
BessyC.FavereauO. (2003). Institutions et économie des conventions. Cahiers d’Économie Politique / Paper in Political Economy, 44(1), 119–164.
7.
BoltanskiL. (1999). The sociology of critical capacity. European Journal of Social Theory, 2, 359–377.
8.
BoltanskiL. (2012 [1990]). Love and justice as competences. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
9.
BoltanskiL.ThévenotL. (Eds.) (1989). Justesse et Justice dans le Travail. Paris: C.E.E. and Presses Universitaires de France.
10.
BoltanskiL.ThévenotL. (2006 [1991]). On justification: Economies of worth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
11.
BoxenbaumE. (2014). Toward a situated stance in organizational institutionalism: Contributions from French Pragmatist Sociology theory. Journal of Management Inquiry, 23, 319–323.
12.
BrèsL.MosonyiS.Gond MuzioD.MitraR.WerrA.WickertC. (2019). New ways towards professionalization: A generative dialogue. Journal of Professional Organizations. In press.
13.
CloutierC.GondJ.-P.LecaB. (2017). Justification, evaluation and critique in the study of organizations: An introduction to the volume. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 52, 3–29.
14.
CloutierC.LangleyA. (2013). The logic of institutional logics: Insights from French pragmatist sociology. Journal of Management Inquiry, 22, 360–380.
15.
CreedW. D.DejordyR.LokJ. (2010). Being the change: Resolving institutional contradiction through identity work. Academy of Management Journal, 53, 1336–1364.
16.
CurrieG.SpyridonidisD. (2016). Interpretation of multiple institutional logics on the ground: Actors’ position, their agency and situational constraints in professionalized contexts. Organization Studies, 37, 77–97.
17.
DansouK.LangleyA. (2012). Institutional work and the notion of test. Management, 15, 503–527.
18.
DionneK.-E.MailhotC.LangleyA. (2019). Modeling the evaluation of process in a public controversy. Organization Studies, 40, 651–679.
19.
DoganovaL.LaurentB. (2016). Keeping things different: Coexistence within European markets for cleantech and biofuels. Journal of Cultural Economy, 9, 141–156.
20.
FinchJ. H.GeigerS.HarknessR. J. (2017). Marketing and compromising for sustainability: Competing orders of worth in the North Atlantic. Marketing Theory, 17, 71–93.
21.
FriedlandR. (2013). God, love, and other good reasons for practice: Thinking through institutional logics. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 39(A), 25–50.
22.
FriedlandR. (2018). Moving institutional logics forward: Emotion and meaningful material practice. Organization Studies, 39, 515–542.
23.
FriedlandR.AlfordR. (1991). Bringing society back in: Symbols, practices and institutional contradictions. In PowellW.DiMaggioP. (Eds.), The new institutionalism in organizational analysis (pp. 232–263). Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
24.
FriedlandR.ArjalièsD. L. (2017). The passion of Luc Boltanski: The destiny of love, violence and institution. In CloutierC.GondJ.-P.LecaB. (Eds.), Justification, evaluation and critique in the study of organizations: Contributions from French Pragmatist Sociology. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 52, 301–347.
25.
GlavasA. (2016). Corporate social responsibility and organizational psychology: An integrative review. Frontiers in Psychology, 7(144). doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00144.
26.
GondJ.-P.Barin CruzL.RauffletE.CharronM. (2016). To frack or not to frack? The interaction of justification and power in a sustainability controversy. Journal of Management Studies, 53(1), 330–363.
27.
GondJ.-P.DemersC.Michaud, (2017a). Managing normative tensions within and across organizations: What can the economies of worth and paradox frameworks learn from each other? In JarzabkowskiP.SmithW.LewisM.LangleyA. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of organizational paradoxes (pp. 239–259). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
28.
GondJ.-P.El-AkremiA.SwaenV.BabuN. (2017b). The psychological micro-foundations of corporate social responsibility: A systematic and person-centric review. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 38, 225–246.
29.
GondJ.-P.LecaB.CloutierC. (2015). A French pragmatist sociology perspective on strategy as practice: Justification, valuation and critique in the practice of strategy. In GolsorkhiD.RouleauL.SeidlD.VaaraE. (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook on strategy-as-practice (pp. 201–221). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
30.
GondJ.-P.MoserC. (2019). The reconciliation of fraternal twins: Integrating psychological and sociological approaches to ‘micro’ corporate social responsibility. Human Relations, forthcoming.
31.
GreenwoodR.RaynardM.KodeihF.MicelottaE.LounsburyM. (2011). Institutional complexity and organizational responses. Academy of Management Annals, 5(1), 317–371.
32.
GümüsaiA. A.SmetsM.MorrisT. (2019). ‘God at work’: Engaging central and incompatible institutional logics through elastic hybridity. Academy of Management Journal. Published online. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2016.0481
33.
HallettT.VentrescaM. J. (2006). Inhabited institutions: Social interaction and organizational forms in Gouldner’s patterns of industrial bureaucracy. Theory and Society, 35, 213–236.
34.
HengstI.-A.JarzabkowskiP.HoeglM.MuethelM. (2019). Toward a process theory of making sustainability strategies legitimate in action. Academy of Management Journal. Published online. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2016.0960
35.
JagdS. (2011). Pragmatic sociology and competing orders of worth in organizations. European Journal of Social Theory, 14, 343–359.
36.
KetokiviM.MantereS. (2010). Two strategies for inductive reasoning in organizational research. Academy of Management Review, 35, 315–333.
37.
KleinN. (2014). This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate. New York: Simon & Schuster.
38.
KraatzM.BlockE. (2008). Organizational implications of institutional pluralism. In GreenwoodR.OliverC.SuddabyR.Sahlin-AnderssonK. (Ed.), The Sage handbook of organizational institutionalism (pp. 243–275). London: SAGE Publications.
39.
LafayeC.ThévenotL. (1993). Une justification écologique? Conflits dans l’aménagement de la nature. Revue Française de Sociologie, 34, 495–524.
40.
LamontM. (2012). Toward a comparative sociology of valuation and evaluation. Annual Review of Sociology, 38, 201–221.
41.
LangleyA. (1999). Strategies for theorizing from process data. Academy of Management Review, 24, 691–710.
42.
LefsrudL.MeyerR. (2012). Science or science fiction? Professionals’ discursive construction of climate change. Organization Studies, 33, 1477–1506.
43.
MartinG.CurrieG.WeaverS.FinnR.McDonaldR. (2017). Institutional complexity and individual responses: Delineating the boundaries of partial autonomy. Organization Studies, 38, 103–127.
44.
McPhersonC. M.SauderM. (2013). Logics in action: Managing institutional complexity in a drug court. Administrative Science Quarterly, 58, 165–196.
45.
MeyersonD. E.ScullyM. A. (1995). Crossroads tempered radicalism and the politics of ambivalence and change. Organization Science, 6, 585–600.
MooreG.GrandyG. (2016). Bringing morality back in: Institutional theory and MacIntyre. Journal of Management Inquiry, 26, 146–164.
48.
NeitzelS.WelzerH. (2012). Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying. The Secret World War II Transcripts of German Prisoners of War. New York: Signal.
49.
NybergD.WrighthC. (2012). Working with passion: Emotionology, corporate environmentalism and climate change. Human Relations, 65, 1561–1587.
50.
NybergD.WrightC. (2013). Corporate corruption of the environment: Sustainability as a process of compromise. British Journal of Sociology, 64, 405–424.
51.
OldenhofL.PostmaJ.PuttersK. (2014). On justification work: How compromising enables public managers to deal with conflicting values. Public Administrative Review, 74(1), 52–63.
52.
OrléanA. (2004) [1994]. L’économie des conventions : définitions et résultats. In: OrléanA. (Ed.), Analyse Économique des Conventions (pp. 9–48). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
53.
PacheA.-C.SantosF. (2013). Inside the hybrid organization: Selective coupling as a response to competing institutional logics. Academy of Management Journal, 56, 972–1001.
54.
PatriottaG.GondJ.-P.SchultzF. (2011). Maintaining legitimacy: Controversies, orders of worth, and public justifications. Journal of Management Studies, 48, 1804–1836.
55.
PowellW. W.ColyvasJ. A. (2008). The microfoundations of institutions. In GreenwoodR.OliverC.SuddabyR.Sahlin-AnderssonK. (Eds.).,The Sage handbook of organizational institutionalism (pp. 276–298). London: SAGE Publications.
56.
ReineckeJ.van BommelK.SpicerA. (2017). When orders of worth clash: Negotiating legitimacy in situations of moral multiplexity. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 52, 33–72.
57.
RichardsM.ZellwegerT.GondJ.-P. (2017). Maintaining moral legitimacy through worlds and words: An explanation of firms’ investment in sustainability certification. Journal of Management Studies, 54, 676–710.
58.
SelznickP. (1957). Leadership in administration. Berkeley: University of California Press.
59.
SilberI. F. (2016). The cultural worth of ‘Economies of Worth’: French pragmatic sociology from a cultural sociological perspective. In InglisD.AlmilaA.-M. (Eds.), The Sage handbook of cultural sociology (pp. 159–177). London: SAGE Publications.
60.
SlawinskiN.BansalT. (2012). A matter of time: The temporal perspectives of organizational responses to climate change. Organization Studies, 33, 1537–1563.
61.
SmetsM.JarzabkowskiP.BurkeG.SpeeP. (2015). Reinsurance trading in Lloyd’s of London: Balancing conflicting-yet-complementary logics in practice. Academy of Management Journal, 58, 932–970.
62.
SmithW. S.BesharovM. L. (2019). Bowing before dual gods: How structured flexibility sustains organizational hybridity. Administrative Science Quarterly, 46, 1–44.
63.
SoderstromS. B.WeberK. (2019). Organizational structure from interaction: Evidence from corporate sustainability efforts. Administrative Science Quarterly. Published online. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001839219836670
64.
SuchmanM. (1995). Managing legitimacy: Strategic and institutional approaches. Academy of Management Review, 20, 571–610.
65.
SwansonD. L. (1999). Toward an integrative theory of business and society: A research strategy for corporate social performance. Academy of Management Review, 24, 506–521.
66.
SwidlerA. (1986). Culture in action: Symbols and strategies. American Sociological Review, 51, 273–286.
67.
TaupinB. (2012). The more things change. . . Institutional maintenance as justification work in the credit rating industry. Management, 15, 528–562.
68.
ThévenotL. (2001). Organized complexity: Conventions of coordination and the composition of economic arrangements. European Journal of Social Theory, 4, 405–425.
69.
ThévenotL.MoodyM.LafayeC. (2000). Forms of valuing nature: Arguments and modes of justification in French and American environmental disputes. In LamontM.ThévenotL. (Eds.), Rethinking comparative cultural sociology: Repertoires of evaluation in France and the United States (pp. 229–272). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
70.
ThorntonP. H.OcasioW.LounsburyM. (2012). The institutional logics perspective: A new approach to culture, structure, and process. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
71.
VoronovM.VinceR. (2012). Integrating emotions into the analysis of institutional work. Academy of Management Review, 37, 58–81.
72.
WeberK. (2005). A toolkit for analyzing corporate cultural toolkits. Poetics, 33, 227–252.
73.
WillmottH. (2015). Why institutional theory cannot be critical. Journal of Management Inquiry, 24, 105–111.
74.
WrightC.NybergD.GrantD. (2012). ‘Hippies on the third floor’: Climate change, narrative identity and the micro-politics of corporate environmentalism. Organization Studies, 33, 1451–1475.
75.
YinR. (2009). Case study research: Design and methods (4th edition). London: SAGE Publications.
76.
ZimbardoP. (2006). The Lucifer effect: Understanding how good people turn evil. New York: Random House.
