Abstract
Introduction 1
Over the last year, two significant books have been published which seek to consolidate the neo-institutionalist approach to organization studies. In this review section, we provide firstly a contextualization of these books (Glenn Morgan) and secondly reviews of these books–the first by Tim Edwards of The Institutional Logics Perspective Thornton, Ocasio and Lounsbury ; the second by Marcus Vinícius Gomes of A Theory of Fields by Fligstein and McAdam. We are conscious that these books are already being heavily debated, both on blogs (see references below to the debate between the authors of the two books on OrgTheory.net) and in the pages of other journals (such as Friedland’s extended review of Thornton et al. in the electronic journal M@n@gement). The authors of these two books clearly see them as major statements both of the key concepts in neo-institutionalism and of the way to do neo-institutionalist analysis of organizational phenomena. They aim to influence the field and particularly doctoral and early career researchers by providing a route map on how to engage productively with this approach. It is only right therefore that their claims should be carefully scrutinized as we attempt to do in this contribution.
Context
Glenn Morgan
Any cursory perusal of journals in the field of organization studies will provide evidence of the influence of neo-institutionalism as a set of concepts emerging in the late 1970s and early 1980s from two sources; firstly the work of the Stanford school of institutionalism (March and Olsen, 2006; Scott, 2008); secondly the work of Powell and DiMaggio, firstly in their Iron Cage article and secondly in their legendary jointly edited ‘orange book’ of 1991 (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Powell and DiMaggio, 1991). The subsequent explosion of interest in the approach can be tracked in the Sage Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism published in 2008, edited by Greenwood, Oliver, Sahlin and Suddaby and consisting of over 800 pages and 34 chapters (Greenwood et al., 2008). The books under review here and published just four years after the Handbook mark a further stage in the development of this approach in that they try to give it more order and coherence than it has so far had. Thus by focusing on Logics or on Fields, they draw sharper boundaries around how to go about this research and provide a clearer path through what is becoming a veritable jungle of neo-institutionalist analysis. Whilst the authors might not feel comfortable about this, they are in part (and in their very different ways) engaged in defining an orthodoxy, facilitating a period of ‘normal science’. In doing so, both books construct a similar view of the past to evoke a similar view of the present but then their ideas about the future of the approach diverge. In this narrative which tends to begin in the late 1970s/early 1980s, neo-institutionalists are concerned with patterns of organizational stability and regularity which they explain by reference to social processes of isomorphism rather than as a reflection of efficiency considerations (such as articulated within contingency theory, the orthodoxy of the time). This ‘first generation’, as they are termed, fight a battle against contingency theory to establish that organization structures and processes must be understood not as the outcomes of competition and efficiency processes but as the result of social norms of appropriateness (March and Olsen, 2006). In order to understand organizational structures and processes, it is necessary to investigate and explain how definitions of what is appropriate emerge in cognitive, normative and regulative arenas, how these expectations are institutionalized (i.e. become stable patterns of action and meaning orientation) inside organizations, how they diffuse across organizations and how they are adapted and translated in different contexts. In this narrative, the dominant theme of the first generation is that the institutionalist approach explains organization structure by reference to the emergence of shared understandings of what is legitimate and socially appropriate for organization structures and processes in particular contexts, contrasting sharply with explanations that emphasize efficiency and effectiveness as the driving forces behind organizations.
Whilst this was a powerful critique of existing orthodoxy within the field of organization studies (and has in many ways effectively displaced most manifestations of that old orthodoxy as citation data show), it left many questions unanswered, particularly those concerned with processes of how and why institutionalized patterns change over time. Both of the books under consideration, therefore, see the ‘second generation’ 2 of neo-institutionalism as increasingly concerned with the problem of institutional change–how does it come about, where does it originate, how are institutions challenged etc.? New concepts such as institutional entrepreneurship, institutional work, embedded agency, inhabited institutions have emerged to address these questions. Thus the present is characterized as an incredibly fruitful phase of concept building, associated with increased methodological rigour and greater empirical scope. The task set by the books’ authors is to sort through this plethora of concepts and ideas and separate the ‘wheat from the chaff’ so that the future will be characterized by an even stronger and more cumulative research programme.
What has been rarely explicitly acknowledged, however, in this process is that the rise of neo-institutionalism in organization studies is part of a wider turn to institutionalism across the social sciences. Hall and Taylor, for example, in 1996 wrote about the three types of institutionalism (rational choice institutionalism, historical institutionalism and sociological/organizational institutionalism) and more recently Vivien Schmidt and others have made a powerful case for a fourth type (discursive or constructivist institutionalism) (Schmidt, 2008, 2010). In these characterizations, what is described as neo-institutionalism in organization studies becomes labelled ‘sociological’ institutionalism because of its emphasis on social norms of appropriateness and legitimacy. It is contrasted to three other forms of institutionalism. Briefly, these are as follows.
Rational choice institutionalism emphasizes that stable patterns of action (i.e. institutions) emerge as ways to solve problems associated with uncertainty and complexity. By providing actors with an accepted way of doing things, institutions reduce transaction costs and enhance efficiency. The emphasis is placed on institutions as the outcome of deliberate, rational design but it is recognized that this in turn creates path dependency (North, 1990). Once an institution is established, actors make investments in it and commitments to courses of action that are dependent on the institution; they are therefore reluctant to liquidate those investments even in the face of ‘rational’ alternatives. Paul David’s study of the continuance of the QWERTY key board in the face of more efficient alternatives is a striking example of this approach (David, 1985).
Historical institutionalism uses similar concepts of path dependency and commitment to explain how institutional formations at the societal level emerge. Unlike rational choice institutionalists, however, historical institutionalists place the central emphasis on power and politics. Institutions, for example, of skills and training, of labour market regulation, etc. emerge in particular patterns because underlying social groupings with different material interests are engaged in struggles over resources. Institutions are effectively temporary truces in this struggle when actors accept that continued conflict is not going to bring any further gains and it is better to consolidate a set of rules than go on. Such truces become stabilized into institutions that in turn may continue for many years. Over time, however, these compromises become eroded, new actors and interests emerge, the conditions for reproduction change and struggle re-emerges in various contexts. Thus path dependency only has limited efficacy. Historical institutionalists have been concerned with phenomena such as ‘varieties of capitalism’ (Hall and Soskice, 2001), and how they change over time (Streeck, 2009; Streeck and Thelen, 2005).
More recently, authors such as Schmidt (2008, 2010), Hay (2006) and Blyth (2002) have articulated a fourth type of institutionalism (variously known as constructivist or discursive institutionalism) which arises from, in Schmidt’s words, ‘taking ideas and discourse seriously’ (Schmidt, 2010). Ideas refer to a wide range of ideational factors such as ideology, collective beliefs, values, norms, worldviews and identities. This ideational approach places a new emphasis on the level of meaning in terms of how institutions reproduce and change. Ideas have the capacity to change the identity of collective actors, to make individuals and groups look at their circumstances in different ways and to reorient their behaviour towards institutions or create new institutions. Constructivist institutionalists are interested in the far-reaching ideational changes such dramatic events can lead to over time, e.g from Keynesianism to neo-liberalism. Major historical shocks and junctures open up space for ideological change, but it requires political actors and social movements to exploit the void by constructing appropriate ideational discourses that are able to address the problems actors are facing and capable of communication to elites and mass populations.
Should these developments in other social sciences be of any interest to the field of organization studies? Judging from the two books under review, which make little systematic reference to this broader context, the answer is no. A full counter argument is beyond the reach of this brief discussion but it is worth making a few points about the range of common interests around these different forms of institutionalism and therefore the value of keeping this broader context within our overall field of vision. This is clearest in relation to the key issue of institutional change.
One obvious example of potential fruitful connection would be the work of Streeck and Thelen (2005) and more recently Mahoney and Thelen (2010) on the issue of institutional change. These authors are generally labelled as historical institutionalists and therefore tend to look for deep-rooted path dependencies that lock actors into certain patterns of action. However, they have increasingly explored patterns of change with an emphasis not on exogenously driven ‘shocks’ (the ‘punctuated equilibrium model of radical institutional change’) but rather to shifts endogenous to particular institutions (a model of ‘incremental but consequential change’). Streeck and Thelen (2005) produce a sophisticated analysis of the different ways in which institutional change occurs by distinguishing five types of incremental change process–drift, exhaustion, displacement, layering, conversion. They show how the capacity for change derives from both the ambiguity and uncertainty of institutional rules and the fact that any such rules are usually the result of compromises between actors with different powers and interests. Therefore as the balance of forces change so do actors start to reshape and challenge rules. In further work with Mahoney, Thelen has tried to specify the conditions under which actors can exert power depending on degrees of centralization and concentration in institutional orders and the ability of certain actors to control veto positions.
A second example from discursive institutionalism would be the work which has emerged on how neo-liberal ideas replaced Keynesian orthodoxy and reshaped the way in which political and economic actors defined their problems and the range of possible solutions. Authors such as Blyth (2002) and Schmidt (2002) showed how specific mechanisms of idea formation and transmission occurred across different countries and how path dependencies in these contexts shaped the implementation of institutional change with consequent effects on specific organizations in the public and private sectors (see also the work of Crouch, 2005, 2011).
These are just two short examples of the sorts of approaches to institutions and institutional change which have developed outside the frame of organizational institutionalism and yet which could be usefully drawn on. Arguably this suggests that rather than going for a further closure of the field by engaging in tasks of consolidation and synthesis as these two books do, we should be opening up and engaging across boundaries particularly where there is so much commonality of purpose and language. Clearly there are professional pressures at work here that reflect how strategies of theoretical, conceptual and methodological closure emerge as responses to publishing and career requirements. However, journals such as Organization have sought to resist those pressures and it is therefore a very suitable place to mount such a critique of these books.
In conclusion to this introduction, these are two very important books that are going to become a necessary passage point for those interested in institutionalism and organizations. There is no doubt they offer fine overviews of the field. The following two reviews of the books echo this whilst developing specific and constructive points of criticism. But what these books underplay is the sense that the questions which they address are the common currency of many of the social sciences and that by confronting and engaging with others at this obvious point of interdisciplinarity, the use of institutionalism in the study of organizations is going to be more enriched than if it turns itself inward and neglects these possibilities. Innovation, theoretical and conceptual, arises from the challenge of confronting difference not from laying down orthodoxies. This may be an inherent problem with any task of consolidation but it is particularly debilitating in this context where there are so many possibilities to cross boundaries and engage constructively in debates.
A Review of The Institutional Logics Perspective By Thornton, Ocasio and Lounsbury
Tim Edwards
Based on the ideas outlined by Friedland and Alford (1991) the concept of institutional logics has gradually emerged as a significant sub-theme in institutional theory and organization studies. Such interest found traction after the work of Thornton and Ocasio (1999) when the concept began to be elevated into a new ‘perspective’ that is now seen as distinct from neo-institutionalism. The recent book by Patricia Thornton, William Ocasio and Michael Lounsbury is another intellectual milestone in the development of these ideas as this work delivers both a programmatic statement about the distinctive features of the logics perspective and an elaboration of the metatheory first outlined by Friedland and Alford (1991). Indeed, as Friedland (2012: 583) attests: Thornton, Ocasio and Lounsbury … have built an intricate, multi-level analytical world that lays out a more ample inter-institutional system, [that] specifies the organizational processes through which institutional logics are enacted, recomposed and even created anew, and posited individual-level processes by which agents both reproduce and transform that system.
In doing so, these authors have elaborated a theoretical architecture, which, as with the original work by Friedland and Alford, has in its turn created new space for reflection and debate.
Institutional logics are the ‘socially constructed, historical patterns of cultural symbols and material practices, including assumptions, values and beliefs, by which individuals and organizations provide meaning to their daily activity, organise time and space, and reproduce their lives and experiences’. They constitute the ‘frames of reference that condition actors’ choices for sense-making, the vocabulary they use to motivate action, and their sense of self and identity’ (Thornton et al., 2012: 2). These frames of reference represent multiple social orders or rationalities based on the family, community, religion, state, market, professions and corporation that are drawn upon by individuals in different measure depending on the availability, accessibility and activation of this cultural knowledge. The availability of such cultural knowledge refers to those logics seemingly ‘available in the long-term memory’ of the actor (Thornton et al., 2012: 83). This says something vital about the past experiences of actors as they come into collision with different societal orders. In turn, availability is mediated by the embeddedness of a particular institutional logic(s); that is, ‘both culture and the situational context shape accessibility’. Activation refers to the use of such knowledge, which is a ‘function of both knowledge accessibility and focus of attention’ (Thornton et al., 2012: 83–84). This integrative model indicates that actors are reliant upon logics for strategic action: ‘institutional logics focus the attention of individual actors through cultural embeddedness … activating a social actor’s situated identities, goals and action schemas. The activated social identities, goals, and schemas and the shared focus of attention shape social interaction’ (Thornton et al., 2012: 84). Logics are conceived as ‘acting on’ individuals because they are exterior to actors; they are manifest in material practices and cultural vocabularies of practice. However, they are also decomposable in so far as they have a modular quality, which means that they can be disassembled into their ‘fragments or categorical elements’ and manipulated by actors to fit changing situational circumstances. It is because they are exterior to individuals and decomposable that actors are able to manipulate them and therefore act strategically.
Thornton, Ocasio and Lounsbury frame the modular quality of logics with reference to an inter-institutional matrix, which highlights six institutional orders on the X-axis and nine categories on the Y-axis. The institutional orders discussed on the X-axis build upon Friedland and Alford’s (1991) original framing but with further revisions that follow later work by Thornton (2002), which added the logic of corporations with the new addition of the logic of communities. In turn, the Y-axis develops the ‘elemental categories’ that help define and distinguish key differences between the symbols and practices characterizing these orders: These contradictions and complementarities are areas of opportunity that can be exploited by individuals and organizations in identifying and solving problems and garnering support through new combinations of existing symbols and practices. This occurs by transposing categorical elements, that is cultural symbols and material practices, from one institutional order to another within an institutional field. (Thornton et al., 2012: 62)
The connections between logics, organizations and individuals rely on these practices and their associated identities. Any change in practice reveals some form of institutional transformation; that is, practices are the medium and outcome of the relationship between structure and agency. This is consistent with related work on, for example, inhabited institutions that places emphasis on social interaction as the conceptual lens to explain the nesting of actions, organizations and logics (Hallett and Ventresca, 2010). These ideas are designed not simply to account for embedded agency but also to incorporate ‘the role of social actors in both the reproduction and transformation of institutional logics’ (Thornton et al., 2012: 82).
However, there are considerable tensions in this elaboration, which relate to the treatment of actors and institutional logics. Some of these issues have been identified and discussed elsewhere (e.g. Friedland, 2012) so it is not my intention to duplicate existing reviews. Rather, my aim in this review is to draw attention to a specific ‘tension’ inherent in the metatheory, which is the treatment of agency in relation to multiple levels of analysis (Delbridge and Edwards, 2013). In Friedland and Alford’s (1991) original work they asserted that the different levels of analysis–the agent, organization and logic–were no more real than the others. They indicate that multi-level analysis must distinguish among as well as elaborate and explain the relationship between levels of analysis. The tension in the new book relates to the treatment of logics, how actors’ actions are shaped and the way they treat actors using this multi-level frame. First, there are limitations to defining logics as constituting institutionalized practices and vocabularies of practice. By placing social practices at the centre of institutional logics it is hard to assess the relationship between logics as historically contingent structures and actions as situated interactions. The issue is with the conflation of logics and practices that limits understanding of logics to specific practices. Following Friedland and Alford (1991), if we are to acknowledge the relative distinctiveness of different levels of analysis it is necessary to assess the pre-existence of logics (as separate from practice) in relation to the agentic capacities of actors (as also separate from practices and logics) that are understood within specific contexts. Keeping agency and structure separate is important if we are to explain the varied connections that exist across multiple levels of analysis (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998). This tension is most apparent in the way logics are thought to act on individuals. Agency is made possible because logics are exterior to actors and so actors can effectively disassemble logics in situational circumstances. However, while it may be possible for agents to operate across different social orders these ideas need to be explained in terms that recognize the relationship between the exteriority of logics as pre-existing structures and the process of internalization, which is a feature of agency and reflexivity (Archer, 2003).
In addition to the conflation of logics and agency within the context of practice there is also the problem of the top-heavy emphasis given to the categorical elements of logics; that is, agency is treated as a second-order concept such that logics take explanatory priority over action. This is apparent in the way logics are featured as an inter-institutional matrix while agency is discussed as a necessary but secondary feature of the matrix. While such criticisms take us beyond the scope of the book (and we should be careful not to understate the contribution offered in the book regarding the microfoundations of logics) it is important that we should not lose sight of those issues, which are emerging in parallel debates that draw attention to actor’s and their ‘actorhood’ as a distinct conceptual issue (Suddaby et al., 2010). While the book includes important explanations of the linkages between attention, accessibility and activation there remain omissions that relate to how and why actors reflect on their social positions; how they relate to, recognize and draw on logics across organizational and inter-institutional contexts (Delbridge and Edwards, 2013). As Friedland (2012: 593, 594) argues: ‘institutions depend, both in their formation and their core, on a passionate identification’. For Friedland, the lack of agency in the book is made apparent in the way the discussion of the microfoundations ‘lack[s] feeling, remaining predominantly in the cognitive or instrumental domain’.
There is no doubt that Thornton et al. have made considerable strides in developing a programmatic statement about the logics perspective. However, more work needs to be done to specify the agent and their capacities to navigate a plural and contested social setting. While Friedland talks of passion and identification others have begun to speak about an actor’s ‘ institutional biography’ (Suddaby et al., 2012). In both there is the recognition that institutions shape action in relation to the individual’s institutional experiences and how these help them to define what is important or what is enabling and constraining (Archer, 2003). Rather than treat agency as a second-order category there is a need to explain social interaction in relation to the institutional biography of those involved and the historical contingency of situational contexts. This focuses attention on how actors engage in social interaction, which should help to explain why some actors see new opportunities in some circumstances while others in the same position see barriers (Mutch, 2007). This formulation reconfigures the relationship between actors and logics. Rather than conflating logics and agency within an assessment of social practices the aim would be to assess the different ways actors might engage in practices given their agentic capacity, which would also reflect differences in how social situations enable or constrain action (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998). In this respect, situatedness would take on renewed importance, not as a secondary feature of a structured environment but as an important–meso level–location where logics and actors interact in different measure or relationality (Mutch et al., 2006).
There is no doubt that in an attempt to provide a programmatic account of the institutional logics perspective, Thornton et al. set themselves a formidable task. To this end, the book frames a multi-level analysis but in doing so it has also thrown open debate about how these ideas relate back to the work of Friedland and Alford (1991). Certainly, Friedland’s (2012) review draws attention to the inherent tensions he sees of establishing a programmatic account of the logics concept. My view is to broadly welcome the work of Thornton et al. precisely because this moves debate along and because it creates space to reflect on the concept. One such development is in how we elaborate the microfoundations of a multi-level approach. While the book presents a detailed framing this collapses the agency-structure debate. If we are to take agency seriously then more needs to be said about actors and their actorhood, which is to treat agency as a separate but also an equally important level of analysis in relation to organizations and logics.
A Theory of Fields: the role of institutional structures and the matter of ‘field duality’
Marcus Vinícius P. Gomes
A Theory of Fields is the latest book by Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam (2012b) in which they attempt to achieve an ambitious objective, to elaborate an integrated theory of fields in order to explain how stability and change are the result of the actors’ interplay in the meso-level of social order; i.e. fields. The book’s last sentence, ‘we look forward to the conversation’ (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012b: 221), invites us all to engage in this debate towards the development of a ‘theory of fields’. This review joins this dialogue by discussing the role of institutional structures and the duality of the concept of ‘field’.
Fligstein and McAdam’s (2012b) book can be seen as a landmark, since it seeks to integrate different knowledge traditions–social movement theory, organizational theory, economic sociology and political science–which, somehow, are concerned with the problem of how organizations could impact their environments. As the title suggests, the book is about ‘fields’, a meso-level of social order that guides our lives and offers us the answers to what, when and how to act (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012b). The idea of employing a notion of ‘field’ to explain change and stability though is not necessarily a novelty per se. Several authors have been focusing on the field level, Bourdieu being the most prominent (Martin, 2003) and playing a strong influence on Fligstein and McAdam’s book.
A field approach carries the advantage of avoiding structural determinism over action and also gives access to micro and macro level of analysis (Martin, 2003). Thus, the originality in Fligstein and McAdam’s theory lies not on building a ‘fieldcentric’ theory (i.e. the internal dynamics of the actors in a particular field), but on emphazising the dynamics among and across fields, as a network of interconnected fields (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012b). As Fligstein and McAdam (2012b: 3) define it, the aim of the book is ‘to explicate an integrated theory that explains how stability and change are achieved by social actors in circumscribed social arenas’. In order to fulfil this goal, they develop three main components that underpin their theory: (i) strategic action fields; (ii) the ‘embeddedness’ of strategic action fields and (iii) social skill (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012b: 9–12). To support our analysis of these components, I will briefly review their major constituting elements.
A strategic action field is an arena in which actors interact with each other based on shared (but not consensual) understandings about the rules, power distribution and purposes of the field (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012b). In this sense, the field can be considered as a meso-level of social order (i.e. above the level of the individual but below the level of ‘society’) where actors (with different access to resources) act according to a particular pattern of rules that have been established. This in turn requires that actors attempt to gain and maintain the cooperation of others in order to create and maintain social worlds (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012b). Therefore, strategic action fields consist of four elements: (i) the actors’ definition of what is at stake; (ii) consensus about who are the players in a particular field, and the positions that they occupy; (iii) consensus about the rules (tactics and strategies) that operate (are allowed) in the field and (iv) a shared understanding or frame that allows actors to make sense of what is happening in the field (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012b).
The second theoretical component is the ‘embeddedness’ of strategic action fields, which considers fields as the building blocks of society, organizations and states, as well as both interconnected and subdivided into other fields. To explain this idea, the authors employ the metaphor of a Russian-doll, in which the smaller dolls are nested inside the larger ones, since each field is embedded in others. This metaphor emphasizes the interconnectivity between fields and the impact of this on stability and change within particular fields. In this web of connections, relations between fields can be classified as proximate or distant, according to the influence they exert on each other. Thus, the interactions among them is an important source of change, as a crisis in one field is likely to have repercussions on proximate fields, which in turn creates an opportunity for actors to engage in changing that field’s rules and frames.
Such theoretical elements–strategic action fields and their ‘embeddedness’–enable the authors to avoid the trap of ‘fieldcentrism’ (i.e. focused only on what is happening inside the field). Also, by defining the boundaries of the field on the basis of ‘what is at stake’, what drives the attention of actors, their approach avoids the narrow identification of the concept of ‘field’ with specific industries and sectors. Instead, they allow the field to emerge from what is meaningful to actors rather than an externally imposed category. Similarly, the macro-environment is treated as composed of other fields, some of which are proximate and therefore impact on ‘what is at stake’ in any specific field.
Finally, the third component of the theory is the micro foundation, social skill, which is defined as ‘the ability to induce cooperation by appealing to and helping to create shared meanings and collective identities’ (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012b: 46). It is at the core of Fligstein and McAdam’s theory and provides the link between field and human activity. Social skill attempts to explain how an actor could bring others to a collaborative work process in order to foster their position in the field; thus, it is about the ability of getting cooperation to support the actors achieving their interests. As actors are constantly jockeying for advantages, they are always employing their social skill, either to justify the maintenance of the field’s status quo, or to advocate change.
Hence, in a simplified way, there are two main sources of change in fields, an exogenous one that addresses occasional ruptures (e.g. a crisis in a field that spreads to proximate ones) and an internal one focused on incremental dynamism (e.g. continuous disputes for advantages amongst actors result in constant conflict and piecemeal changes) (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012b).
To stimulate the conversation around their book the authors have been promoting debate about its ideas even before it was published. A summary of the book was published in Sociological Theory (Fligstein and McAdam, 2011) and, in the following issue, a critique by Goldstone and Useem (2012) was released, with the authors offering a rejoinder in the same issue (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012a). In light of the book and these texts, the comments here will be focused on two points–the role of institutional structures and the duality of ‘field’.
Goldstone and Useem (2012) have developed a critique in relation to Fligstein and McAdam about the fractal nature of society, illustrated by the Russian-doll metaphor used by the authors. Goldstone and Useem point out the absence in Fligstein and McAdam’s accounts of institutions and values that create similar rule frameworks, which operate across different levels of society (e.g. democracy or aristocratic privilege, market choice, individual rights, racism, machismo, etc.). The consequence is the incapacity to differentiate, on the one hand, the constant jockeying for advantages in a field and, on the other hand, the crises that impact on those wider institutional structures.
In response, Fligstein and McAdam (2012a) reiterate their argument about the embeddedness and interconnectedness of fields and claim that this ‘macro structure/process’ could also be explained by the relationship among fields: Indeed, the whole point of highlighting the Russian-doll quality of much of social life is to suggest that fields are embedded in extensive relations with other fields. It is in this network of relationships that field prospects rise and fall. For us, it is the ‘rolling turbulence’ that comes from this embedding of any given field in a broader environment of fields that shapes the former’s prospects for stability and change. This emphasis on change pressures from proximate fields would seem to be perfectly congruent with Goldstone and Useem’s stress on the importance of macro structures/processes. (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012a: 49)
Understanding the strategic action fields as the building blocks of society, Fligstein and McAdam (2012a) argue that the proximity and interconnectedness of fields is a better way to understand these cross-cutting processes than imposing a deeper structural ordering that acts on fields outside of the actors’ notions of what is at stake. Thus, they reject the idea that there is an institutional logic that cuts across different fields and may inform practices in several fields.
From many perspectives, this is a problematic move since it is only with such a concept of institutional structure that it is possible to recognize persistent patterns throughout society. In the case of the black population in Brazil, for example, the concept of racism may help to understand why these social actors have poor access to education and high paying jobs, and are most likely to be victims of violence. Even though it is possible to argue that they have little access to resources or are not so well positioned in those (potential) fields, it is hard to deny the existence of racism as a logic that cuts across all of these fields. Therefore, it is possible to advocate that racism is deeply embedded in this social context, as a constitutive element of several different fields. Likewise, the practice informed by it–prejudice–may assume different characteristics in different fields, sometimes not even associated with racism. For example, in the football field, throwing bananas on the pitch could be analysed as an act informed by racism, but it is unlikely that in a job interview a banana would be thrown in the office. Nevertheless, other practices, also informed by an underlying logic of racism could be found in such a field.
In contrast, one might argue that racism could constitute a field in its own right and should be analysed as such. However, actors are not circumscribed only by the ‘racism field’; they are acting in several fields at the same time. If we followed this approach, racism would be reduced to its practices (i.e. prejudice) manifested in distinctive ways in different fields. Consequently, the ‘structural element’ that informs the underlying logic of all these practices and manifestations would be lost.
In this context, Loïc Wacquant’s (1989: 15) work on the intersection of class and race appears to be fruitful: […] Race or class exist only to the extent that people act on their basis. They are competing modalities, or principles of vision and division, rooted in material structures, by which social agents can be identified, individuals marked and their subjectivities constituted, and collectives mobilized and demobilized. Furthermore, both class and race lead a dual existence: each exist first in materiality, as objective differences that can be observed, measured in the form of distribution of efficient resources and goods; and second in subjectivity, as schemas of perception, appreciation and action, in the form of symbolic distinctions produced and reproduced via socially engrained dispositions.
Therefore, the Russian-doll metaphor does not seem sufficient to explain these ‘structural elements’ that impact on human action. Fligstein and McAdam argue that the concept of institutional logics, often used to explain underlying institutional forces and structures, is too broad and amorphous to explain what is going on in and across fields (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012b: 10). Also, they argue that the notion of ‘logics’ implies that actors would share the same interpretative frame, something which they reject in favour of the idea that frames remain contestable and contested within fields, even when there is a clearly dominant set of ideas and practices. This following quote presents the authors’ argument: Finally, there is the broad interpretive frame that individual and collective strategic actors bring to make sense of what others within the strategic action field are doing. And here, rather than positing a consensual frame that holds for all actors, which is implied by the idea of ‘logics’, we expect instead to see different interpretative frames reflecting the relative positions of actors within the strategic action field. […] All of these aspects of strategic action field structure are lumped together in the conventional view of institutional logics. This leads to a number of problems. The use of the term ‘institutional logic’ tends to imply way too much consensus in the field about what is going on and why and way too little concern over actors’ positions, the creation of rules in the field that favor the more powerful over the less powerful, and the general use of power in strategic action fields. In short, the relative and potentially oppositional positions of actors within the field are not well captured by the concept of institutional logic. The term fails to capture the ways in which different actors in different positions in the strategic action field will vary in their interpretation of events and respond to them from their own point of view. (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012b: 11–12)
By contrast, Fligstein and McAdam place emphasis on the concept of social skill as central to understanding the shaping dynamics of fields, rather than processes of structural determinism. As fields are socially constructed, they fashion a set of mutual understandings (frames) that are shared by the fields’ members over a period of time. These frames are determined by the actors’ position in the field, so there is no consensual frame shared by all actors. Whilst there may be a dominant frame, this is only dominant because a particular group of actors have been able to use their power resources and social skills to make it so. Alternative framings may exist within the field, but they contest the space occupied by the dominant frame and the powerful actors.
On the one hand, the idea of frames developed by Fligstein and McAdam does enable analysis to capture processes of conflict between actors with different frames and, therefore, to sustain a view of the actor as interested and purposeful, rather than a passive participant in ‘taken for granted’ actions (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012b). On the other hand, their approach of abandoning any notion of underlying institutional structures seems to lose a key element in providing explanations for how frames are constituted and how the agency of actors is shaped not just by fields but also by structures. Thus, the idea of competing logics (Friedland and Alford, 1991) and inhabited institutions (Hallett and Ventresca, 2006) might be fruitful here since they emphasize that institutions only produce–and reconstruct–meaning through the interaction of actors in specific context. What is advocated therefore is a need to discuss how frames in fields are influenced by institutional patterns and how they are reshaped by the interactions of actors.
Another interesting point to consider is the notion of field being, at the same time, a variable characteristic and an analytical category to account for the actors’ actions. It assumes a variable characteristic when it is used to explain change and stability in the field, as the authors state: ‘from the very beginning, accounting for stability and change in fields was central to our theoretical aims’ (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012a: 48). In contrast, field is an analytical category when defined as a social constructed arena, where it is possible to observe the actors’ action: Defining a field as being concerned with all of the players who have something at stake simplifies doing field analysis by making it clear who the players are and what the relationships are. The advantage of doing this is it focuses the analysts’ attention on the players who are jockeying for position for particular purposes. (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012b: 168)
Hence, it is possible to identify the existence of a duality of ‘field’ in their work, with this core concept assuming two different roles within their theory. Although they do not only focus on what is happening ‘inside’ the field, but also link the field within a web of other fields, when stressing the duality element ‘field as a variable’, the theory might fall into a different kind of ‘fieldcentrism’, in which the ‘field’ becomes an entity, the motive and the object of the research (Delbridge and Edwards, 2007). Following this path, the analysis of the field might become an end in itself. Conversely, by considering ‘field’ as an analytical category we should be able to take into account rich context ‘portrayals’, not only from the researcher’s eyes, but also from the actors’ perspective, contributing to bringing the agent into our theorizations.
Therefore, field when used to understand what actors are doing, how they are making sense of the social life, can be a path to different levels of analysis, fostering a relational approach (Delbridge and Edwards, 2007, 2013; Mutch et al., 2006) which locates the actor’s agency in a historical moment and accounts for the micro and macro impact of their actions. Therefore, the purpose of the research could move from change and stability, occurring in the field, to how the actors’ daily interactions impact on the structures in the micro and macro levels.
A Theory of Fields is certainly an outstanding contribution and a book worth reading, offering several insights and new perspectives in a comprehensive way, and also opening it to discussion. By joining this discussion, this review acknowledges the importance of Fligstein and McAdam’s effort to place the socially skilled actor at the centre of their analysis, but it is also important to reflect upon the structural elements that impact on the way we make sense of the world we live in. As the authors point out, we need to understand the relationship between structure and human action and its role in fields (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012b: 129–215). In the development of the new institutionalism in organization studies, it is clear that the structure element was overstressed, leaving little space to the active actor (Scott, 2008). Fligstein and McAdam (2012b: 179) seek to address what they see as the tendency for: [Most sociologists] believe that everything is the product of social structure and that no matter what anyone thinks, that structure is way more powerful than people. Racism, sexism, classism, ageism, and other forms of discrimination are structurally induced. But if all of the ills of society are determined by social structure and there is little individual agency in social life, then there is no opportunity to actively change society through a critique of these forces. The structures are stronger than ideas or actors who might be in a position to make social change.
A Theory of Fields provides us with a theoretical system to deal with this issue. However, to relegate the role of institutional structure to how actors perceive and behave in their empirical world is like ‘throwing out the baby with the bath water’.
Perhaps it is necessary to regard structures as important as actions in the reproduction of these inequalities. There is a need to critique these forces in the attempts to change them. After all, societies have been reproducing such inequalities on a daily basis for a long time. This is not to deny that these structures have been changing due to actors’ actions and conflicts, but they still play an important role in human action.
Fostering a field approach could be an opportunity to bring a different account to the problem of structure and agency. In this sense, Fligstein and McAdam’s (2012b) conceptualization of strategic action fields as an analytical category contributes to bringing the actors’ interests into account and also conceiving of more dynamic actors. Nevertheless, as I have discussed, there is a need to avoid a field duality here that could lead to field being an end in itself. Furthermore, there is need to reflect upon the role of structures in shaping the shared understandings of the field, which inform the actors’ actions.