Pathways to Institutional Disruption? Translation,hope,and the dynamics of hype

Abstract

In this paper, we theorize the institutional dynamics of hype by approaching hype as involving translation that holds potential to threaten institutional orders. Theorizing the relationship between hope, expectations, and master-ideas, we build a process model of hype involving translation of a pathway passing through three distinct phases: materialization, mobilization, and immunization. In doing this, we chart a new approach to explore the role of hype when altering and potentially even disrupting institutions, without significant blowback, driving a particular form of radical institutional change. The paper contributes to seminal work on hype produced by entrepreneurship and science and technology studies, as well as to research on organizational institutionalism and the travel and translation of ideas.

Introduction

When a popular idea becomes almost too popular, it can be thought of as hyped. This is when an idea spreads beyond what seems rational and reasonable, while promises of benefits and returns are not yet proven. There are plenty of examples of such hype in the contemporary world: in medical breakthroughs promising unprecedented longevity to individuals, or in new management practices using “agile” or “lean” principles promising unparalleled efficiency for any type of organization, anywhere, at any time. The current belief in AI technologies is a salient example, holding promises to solve a wide range of issues and problems. Hypes such as these seem to be linked to sincere and eternal hope: don’t we all hope for a better society, better organizations, or a better life? And doesn’t a novel, faster, and superior way to realize such hope occasionally seem to be just within reach? In some cases, hype may even alter societal structures at large, for good or bad, potentially displacing institutional orders as we know them. In the global spread of new public management a few decades ago (Hood, 1991), in current authoritarian trends manifested through, for example, foreign funding restrictions on civil society (Bromley et al., 2020), or in efforts to re-imagine our future to handle grand challenges such as climate change (Grimes & Vogus, 2021; Levy & Spicer, 2013), we may see traces of hype.

In this paper, we propose focusing on hype as process, holding the potential to alter institutional structures and understandings. Hype can be understood as dangerous and problematic, leading to market bubbles (Goldfarb & Kirsch, 2020; Vogel, 2018), or developments in medical research that are dangerous to patients (Brown, 2003). Yet there is an inherent duality to hype; it frequently has ambiguous, and potentially problematic, implications over time, yet it is often imperative for innovation and change to happen. Much of the work on hype has focused on the latter, thus on the innovative capacities of hype. Some have looked at narratives and storytelling of entrepreneurs, focusing specifically on their legitimacy-rendering efforts (Garud et al., 2014), or studied hype as an element of entrepreneurial resource management in nascent markets (Logue & Grimes, 2022). Others have compared consensus/non-consensus entrepreneurs (Pontikes & Barnett, 2017) or looked at characteristics of certain markets and market entries (Wind & Mahajan, 1987), to understand how entrepreneurs may create hype and bring about substantial changes. These papers are part of an important body of work on the organizational dynamics of hype and the opportunities for positive social change that hype holds, notwithstanding disappointments.

Despite the possibility of larger societal consequences of such processes, efforts to theorize the potential institutional implications of hype are scarce. Research on hype in the entrepreneurship literature (Van Lente et al., 2013) and in science and technology studies (Brown, 2003) focuses extensively on the organizational trajectories of hype and their results. For example, a recent special issue dutifully chronicles a range of factors contributing to the creation of hype such as resources (Rady et al., 2025), swagger (Heupel et al., 2024), and legitimacy (Hampel & Dalpiaz, 2025), as well as the challenge of hype in relation to structural inequalities (Byrne & Giuliani, 2025) and temporal constraints (Wood et al., 2024). Some research deals explicitly with the institutional context of hype (Fisher et al., 2016; Spivack et al., 2025), but these do not examine the potential hype holds for altering institutional structures at large.

In concurring with Logue and Grimes (2022, p. 1056) on the need to theoretically separate the understanding of hype from its potential consequences in specific markets, we here aim to build an organizational theory of hype that can help explain the wider implications of hype for institutional change (Dacin et al., 2002). To do so, we propose a model focusing on hype as process, explaining the movement of ideas and models that forms the basis of hype and investigating the dynamics that may help to break institutional barriers (Frey-Heger et al., 2021; Greenwood et al., 2008). With insights from the sociology of expectations and the organizing of futures (Borup et al., 2006; Levy & Spicer, 2013) showing how imaginaries of near as well as distant futures can be used to drive change (Augustine et al., 2019) and how visions of a possible future are needed to overcome our contemporary reality and address grand challenges (Grimes & Vogus, 2021), we argue that such expectations and imaginaries embody hope that drives hype forward.

Our approach rests on insights from organizational institutionalism, specifically from translation studies. We approach hype through the lens of ideas that travel in time and space (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996), where these ideas have potentially significant consequences beyond particular organizational, and even institutional, settings. The term translation is not used in a linguistic sense but is rather to “point to the simultaneous processes of movement and transformation; things change as they are moved” (Wedlin & Sahlin, 2017, p. 109). It is the process, the movement, itself that constitutes hype, through the way its materialized ideas and models are being formed and moved through translation. With this theoretical lens, we ask: What are the processes whereby hype develops and travels, and what are the mechanisms whereby hype can challenge or even disrupt institutional orders?

While much research on diffusion and translation has primarily addressed fashions and fads in management practices (Abrahamson, 1991; Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996), as in cases of specific models or practices, the focus on hype implies attention to more generalized and less “packaged” sets of ideas, linked together by a shared vision of the future. Following Logue and Grimes (2022) hype can be defined as “a collective vision and promise of a possible future, around which attention, excitement, and expectations increase over time” (p. 1056). In the context of potential institutional change, we add to this definition the notion of hope; hope and the vision for a normatively better future. We suggest that in a process of hype ideas connect to a master-idea related to realms of perennial hope, such as health, wealth, or prosperity at large, and become linked to expectations for betterment, improvement, and progress.

First, we will elaborate on the concept of hype and its relationship to hope, and on how insights from research on the travel and translation of ideas can help us explain the institutional dynamics of hype. Here we discuss how hype may relate to hope and new pathways to realize perennial human desires, and how the sociology of expectations provides a way to understand the interplay between the rationalization of hope and the process movement of hype. Based on these insights, we develop a general model of how to understand the institutional dynamics of hype and present a process detailing three phases that can be used for empirical studies of hype.

Hype: What Is It and Why Does It Matter?

Hype is built on strong beliefs that something will happen, or the “real time representations of future technological situations and capabilities” (Borup et al., 2006, p. 286). Such expectations are shared among actors and are performative in that they guide the attention and actions of these actors. These characteristics are described in what is often referred to as “the hype cycle model,” where expectations are seen as potentially “collectively pursued explorations of the future that affect activities in the present” (Van Lente et al., 2013, p. 1616). In this model, one core feature of hype is that it is characterized by shared “peaks of inflated expectations” where interest and visibility for the product or technology are maximized (Van Lente et al., 2013, p. 1616), implying a potential for overrating the importance or viability of the product or idea. For example, new technologies typically go through a process where there is enthusiasm, and even overenthusiasm (i.e., inflated expectations), and subsequently move into a phase of disillusionment or disappointment, before the relevance and role of the new technology finds its place in a particular market or domain (Linden & Fenn, 2003). While hype thus holds the possibility that expectations have been exaggerated or overrated (Linden & Fenn, 2003), it is also possible that expectations are met, or possibly even exceeded, eventually. Hype, according to the hype cycle model, can quite simply be the way new technologies develop and become widespread.

The concern for a build-up of attention over time, with a potential of overrating value, is shared with related concepts such as bubbles (Goldfarb & Kirsch, 2020; Vogel, 2018), market overstatements (Pontikes & Barnett, 2017) or technological overshoot (Brown, 2003). The overrating is often tied to financial or economical value, particularly in studies that focus on hype as bubbles that run the risk of bursting. From this perspective, hype can primarily be understood in retrospect. For example, Vogel (2018) analyzes historical examples of when market valuations have been overrated compared to an expected future earnings stream. In another historical study spanning 150 years, Goldfarb and Kirsch (2020) find a common boom and bust cycle of technological innovation, driving a market bubble to develop.

In the hype cycle model, it is at the peak between overenthusiasm and disillusionment that doubts may begin to surface; perhaps caused by instances where expectations have not been met or not yet realized. While doubts may have been there earlier, it is at this stage that the unstable state of expectations is revealed. While there may not be a crash or a bubble bursting, hype at this stage takes on a different, more ambiguous character. In a study of the field of biotech, Brown (2003) describes this not as a particular stage but rather as a core feature of hype, or what can be considered a hype dilemma:

On the one hand, we accept that expectations are constitutive and performative and that hype plays a fundamentally important role in organising our future present/s. On the other hand, hype is a source of ‘overshoot’, ultimately damaging credibilities and reputations. Communities of promise are constantly presented with the difficulty of judging the veracity of future claims. And we engage with these processes of judging whilst knowing that things rarely turn out as expected. (Brown, 2003, p. 17)

The recognition of the dilemma of hype as holding expectations and promises that may be assessed in different ways, pays attention to the need to understand the dynamics involved in the building, and eventual breaking, of interest in and attention to hype. To do this, we need to extend the understanding of hype beyond a focus on specific organizations or markets, and consider hype to be a process, a movement, which holds the build-up of interest and attention to one or more ideas or concepts that makes them move between institutional settings. For this we engage with institutional studies of translation.

Translation and the Processes of Idea Travel

To develop a process-oriented view of hype we turn to theories that were developed primarily to explain the travel of management ideas. Resembling the reasoning of the hype cycle model, early diffusion literature (Abrahamson, 1991; Strang & Meyer, 1993) built on the observation of a wave-like movement of ideas, where an idea becomes popular and is adopted by many organizations at a particular time, is popular for a while, and then seems to fade or vanish. Diffusion studies focused on explaining the drivers of the spreading ideas and distinguished between fads that were impelled by internal actors, and fashions where organizations external to the group determined the adoption rate of innovations inside the group (Abrahamson, 1991).

In organizational institutionalism, research on translation was originally developed as a nuanced and process-oriented alternative to the diffusion literature, exploring the drivers and mechanisms of idea travel. Leaning in part on work from French sociology (Callon, 1984; Latour, 1984), institutional studies of translation, particularly as proposed in the seminal edited volume of Czarniawska and Sevón (1996), expanded and deepened the scope of diffusion studies. This was done by focusing less on what made specific ideas attractive, to focus more on what created the movement and how the ideas and settings changed in the process. Czarniawska and Sevón (2005) labelled translation as the vehicle of idea travel; as the fundamental process whereby ideas, objects, and practices move between contexts and across settings. Through numerous studies tracing fashionable management ideas as they entered new contexts and materialized, translation studies explored the dynamics, implications, and change of traveling ideas as they were adopted in various organizational settings (for an overview of these studies, see Sahlin & Wedlin, 2008; Wedlin & Sahlin, 2017).

A model developed by Czarniawska and Joerges (1996, p. 46) provides the basis for a process-oriented perspective on the travel of ideas. In this model, translation is described as a translocal process, where ideas move into objectified and actionable concepts and practices, that in turn may eventually become institutionalized. Fashions are formed by many such translation processes, in a spiraling movement that may be viewed as the build-up and popularization of an idea that transcends local time and space:

As more and more people are persuaded to translate the idea for their own use, it can be materialized into a collective action. In order to become public knowledge, though, an idea must become objectified, made into a quasi-object: only then can it travel between local places and moments so as to move into translocal (global, collective-historical) time/spaces. [. . .] In order to solidify, to legitimize the idea-become-material, signals are sent to the wider community: dramatizing, justifying, marketing, selling, propagating. An idea, locally translated into action, is reified into a quasi-object that can travel: a book, a picture, a design, for purposes of non-local communication, recognizable in terms of translocal frame of reference. (Czarniawska and Joerges, 1996, p. 44)

In this view, translations have both a discursive and a material component, meaning that they are manifested as ideas, in discourses and narratives, and as materializations: in a model, a technology, an image, or a product. Materialization is required for ideas to travel. Both meanings and practices change as ideas travel in local and global space.

Also in the hype literature, narratives and their materialization are prominent. Garud et al. (2014), for instance, show how entrepreneurs actively legitimate new ventures through revised storytelling, using projective narratives to plot the future. The importance of active legitimation efforts of products and ventures is also echoed in other hype studies. For example, Logue and Grimes (2022) describe how social proof can be demonstrated at a field level by entrepreneurs through both categorical and temporal flexibility. Relatedly, Fisher et al. (2016) explain how an idea and its materialization may be proactively legitimized in different ways, and Wood et al. (2024) outline the importance of narratively navigating temporal commitments in the context of a hyped venture. The relevance of framing, a form of narrative, and moral legitimacy of a new venture is also demonstrated by Hampel and Dalpiaz (2025).

Translation studies have given ample attention to various actors that themselves do not create fashions or direct them, but that try, often purposefully and successfully, to influence them. While this body of research has primarily focused on translating actors inside adopting organizations (such as middle and top managers advocating for change, management consultants hired to implement ideas, and other local actors, see Sahlin & Wedlin, 2008; Wedlin & Sahlin, 2017) our focus on institutional dimensions of hype suggests that we need to recognize a wider set of actors, beyond the local setting, engaged in various translations of ideas relating to hype. These actors, variously labeled as carriers (Sahlin-Andersson & Engwall, 2002), translators (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996), or others (Meyer et al., 1997), help to popularize and legitimize materialized elements of hype, making them travel.

Hype research similarly points to a range of different actors. For instance, focusing on the role of marketing for hype, Wind and Mahajan (1987) take into consideration a broad range of stakeholders. Gurun and Butler (2012) suggest that news media, which may be seen as a relevant other (Meyer et al., 1997) for idea travel, matters for the forming of and attention to hype, and show how local news will spur local investment in products that may contribute to a subsequent translation of elements of hype. These authors in essence also outline the institutional complexity (Greenwood et al., 2011) in the context of hype, while only a few hype studies describe it as such (Spivack et al., 2025). Given this institutional complexity, actors need to appeal to different audiences with both swagger and passion to remain legitimate (Hampel & Dalpiaz, 2025; Heupel et al., 2024), to be able to acquire, and retain, resources for their task (Rady et al., 2025). In this involvement of a plethora of actors, we may see much similarity to the translocal fashions described by Czarniawska and Joerges (1996).

Yet while translation of fashion is similar to hype of certain products or technologies (Van Lente et al., 2013), there are important distinctions between hype and such fashions. First, hype appears to be more encompassing and less specific than any one fashion. Hype can encompass many different materializations, and even many ideas, models, or fashions that become subject to translation. Hype, in this broader sense, connects to what Czarniawska and Joerges (1996) label as master-ideas, going beyond specific fashions. Such master-ideas are located in between traveling ideas and durable institutions, forming the larger idea-context of fashions that are drawn upon as ideas make their way into stable institutional forms. Such master-ideas, Czarniawska and Joerges (1996) write, “serve as a focus for fashions and build a bridge between the passing fashion and a lasting institution” (p. 36). Drawing on MacIntyre (1990 [1981]), they further suggest that master-ideas “come from the narratives of the past, which are translated into the present set of concepts, and are projected into the future, often in opposition to the present” (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996, p. 36). Linking to a master-idea is what gives hype its connection to more durable ideas that transcend specific contexts or settings. Thus, while hype often holds many different ideas, as well as many different materializations of these ideas, these are bound together by a common vision, a master-idea, which stretches beyond any individual market or institutional field.

A second feature of hype that makes it distinct from fashions concerns the motive for change. Czarniawska and Joerges (1996) describe how it is not necessarily progress that motivates adoption and translation of fashionable ideas; rather it is change itself. To follow a fashion means in the short run to be modern and to be different, but in the long run fashion is repetitive and involves doing what others are doing; fashions involve both variation and uniformity. On this note, hype is clearly different from fashions as it involves a vision for a different future, connected to a wider and deeper set of expectations for progress. This involves the ambition to provide something perceived as normatively and substantially better. Thus extending the suggestion by Van Lente et al. (2013) that hype is part of a “discourse of revolution and technological breakthrough” (Van Lente et al., 2013, p. 1616), we consider hype to be part of a discourse of modernity, progress, and development, converging around a desire to improve the human condition in some profound way. Desire for improvement can come from a stable state, a context where advances seem to be already ongoing, or from a position of fear and a sense of deterioration. Broadly speaking, hype may thus relate to almost anything; from salvage from environmental disaster to excellence in leadership, from infinite wellbeing to supreme ways of organizing, held together a by a master-idea articulating a different, and (according to those embracing the hype) better, future.

Hope as a Motor

The process-oriented model of translation helps us understand mechanisms of idea travel. For our process model of hype, however, we need to explore in greater detail what drives the translations constitutive of hype, and what creates room for such overblown or inflated expectations that institutions may potentially be disrupted. In the translation of fashions, it is imitation that is the motor that makes ideas travel (Czarniawska & Sevón, 2005). An actor imitates another actor perceived to be more successful, more modern, or more liked. Despite imitation holding elements of both innovation and conformity to previous ideas, as discussed above, fashions are always limited by existing institutions, as some actors imitate other actors that provide a version, or an adaptation, of existing forms or practices. The notion of herd mentality to denote hype where actors imitate one another (see Goldfarb & Kirsch, 2020; Vogel, 2018) is similarly restricted, implying an almost automatic process whereby actors follow one another, to enter new markets or to move to invest, despite this not necessarily being the most beneficial for them.

In hype, we argue that another driving force is prominent, namely hope. Hope holds two important elements. First, it recognizes that hype is built on a desire for something different, something that has not been done before. If we consider hype to be related to a master-idea of improvement, progress, and visions for a better future, hope is grounded outside, or beyond, any particular field or institutional order, which creates space for newness that may challenge fundamental institutional principles. Second, hope embodies the expectations and desires required to make the “conceptual jumps” (Bronk, 2009, p. 203) necessary to imagine a different future that diverges, sometimes significantly, from the present. Hope, we argue, is the key to understand what happens “when a conjunction of social forces weakens, or removes, normal institutional constraints” (Abrahamson & Eisenman, 2008, p. 721), allowing for hype to bring about institutional change.

To find a more detailed understanding of hope as a driving force for institutional change, we turn to hope theory. In its simplest form, hope may be understood as “the belief that one can find pathways to desired goals and become motivated to use those pathways” (Snyder et al., 2002, p. 257). Snyder et al. (2002) stipulate that there are three central building blocks of hope: (1) goals, (2) pathway thinking, and (3) agency thinking. Goals hold ideas of a desired future state that may supersede any single organizational action, belonging to larger systems of beliefs indicating that which is good and sought after in a particular institutional context. This desired state has positive connotations from the perspective of those who define that goal and is sometimes even perceived as relevant also beyond specific institutional fields.

The second building block of hope, pathway thinking, is what spurs initiatives to reach goals. In hope theory, it is the pathway thinking directed towards a goal, full of yet unrealized potential of reaching a desired state, which provides the movement forward. While desired future states are rationalized beyond a specific setting and often linked to perennial human needs—such as, for example, health and wealth—the pathways are related to concrete actions deemed appropriate to attain this desired state. The pathway thinking of hope makes it closely related to some of the basic myths of rational organizing as they were developed and institutionalized in the early part of the 20th century (Fayol, 1949 [1919]; Taylor, 2004 [1911]), meaning that it is primarily the belief in the possibility and myth of rational organizing (March & Simon, 1958 ; Meyer & Rowan, 1977) that will enable the realization of expectations linked to hope.

Norms connected to the dream of rational organizing have been intimately related to ideals of progress and innovation, being important drivers of imitation as they shape the expectations and guide attention to new ideas (Abrahamson & Eisenman, 2008). As such, hope constitutes a fundamental mechanism in contemporary organizing, as organizing efforts with rational intentions continue as an endless thread of finely spun yarn connecting and enabling almost every aspect of organizations and organizing (Simon, 1947). For as Brunsson (2006) writes: “hope for a better world often endures, despite repeated disappointments” (p. 11), because “even though there is much in our world that falls short of the rational, the absence of rationality does not reduce our hope that rationality can be achieved” (p. 13). Hope may thus be viewed not only as a key enabler of the dream of rationality, institutionalizing rational decision-making as the taken-for-granted form of organizing, but also as a fundamental driving force for hype.

As a third important element, hope holds assumptions about agency and the belief that actors may have “the capacity to transpose and extend schemas to new contexts” (Sewell, 1992, p. 19). To have hope means that we believe in our capacity to act, as well as in our ability to think that we understand the pathway to goal attainment. Hope, in this sense, guides so many of our thoughts, decisions, and actions, without which most of these essentially would lose their meaning. These latter two features of hope—the pathway thinking and the belief in agency to achieve it—ties hope to translation processes in hype.

Linking Hope to New Pathways

With some key elements of hype in place—translation connected to a master-idea and its relationship to hope—we now return to expectations as the backbone of hype to explore how hope and expectations for an imagined better future can be transformed into distinct pathways for change. As noted above, the sociology of expectations emphasizes a performative element, where promises of future states can be understood as “wishful enactments of a desired future” (Borup et al., 2006, p. 286). This emphasis on performativity adds nuance to our understanding of hope and elucidates the processual nature of hype. Central to the performativity of expectations is the ability of those expectations to attract support, stakeholder involvement, and the forming of interest and agency around a specific pathway to change. As one of the key elements of translation, expectations allow us to theorize the role of actors and activities that can materialize and embody hope that feeds the process of translation.

Actors, as well as materiality, may vary across groups and contexts (Borup et al., 2006). New pathways, however, always involve the creation of new practices and relations. Brown and Michael (2003) suggest that “radical discourses about the future are indicative of the emergence of networks (new relationships) and activities (new ways of doing things)” (p. 16). While expectations in this manner can be used to promote a new pathway, they can similarly be used to protect established ones. Brown and Michael (2003) describe how in instances where organizing is already established, such as in the case of rationalized pathways to hope, we might often find huge investments aimed at “insulating the field from threat through planning, administration, and bureaucracy as a form of future-oriented activity” (p. 16). In such a context, embracing the rationalized elements of organizing becomes a way of projecting the future, without seemingly diverging from established pathways.

Beckert (2013) further elucidates the interplay between an imagined state (the goal) and a rationalized process of attaining it (the pathway) by referring to fictional expectations: “decision-making of intentionally rational actors is anchored in fictions (. . .) By ‘fictions’ I refer to images of some future state of the world or course of events that are cognitively accessible in the present through mental representation” (p. 220). These fictions orient decision-making, as it is “the images of the future that shape present decisions” (Beckert, 2013, p. 221). By connecting to a master-idea of progress and betterment, a characteristic of hype is that it reaches beyond the standard procedures of rational decision-making, opening space for imaginations of something normatively “better.” Rather than using established models of rationality, images of the future rest on normative grounds that motivate a certain shift or divergence from such rationality. This is what Beckert (2013) emphasizes, suggesting that the role of imagination is to enable the “conceptual jumps” (Bronk, 2009, p. 203) required for a new pathway to take shape. Such conceptual jumps, in turn, create room for new actors and networks, as well as new institutional structures and cultural frames, to develop.

Conceptual jumps are thus key characteristics of hype and are also one of the features which distinguish translation in hype from other such processes. Making the distinction between near and distant futures (Augustine et al., 2019), hype is clearly oriented towards the latter. While change oriented to the near future has a high level of concreteness and involves existing rationalized pathways, closely tied to the development of current practices, hype and the interest in the distant future represent a conceptual jump into an unknown state, requiring a very stylized and abstract approach that involves developing new pathways. To evaluate the outcome of such distant futures, Augustine et al. (2019) suggest that ideologies, morality, and cosmologies are important. In a similar way, evaluating and understanding, or even appreciating, a new pathway that constitutes hype suggests the possibility, perhaps even the need, to diverge from established rationalized tools of evaluation and accountability. This means that a process of translation between the near and distant future also entails a reconfiguration of the rationalized myths of organizing in a particular institutional context. Such a divergence from institutionalized patterns of action when approaching the more abstract future is also described by Beckert (2021) in his work on imaginaries of different economic futures. This type of imaginaries is a way to deal with uncertainty that is not handled through established heuristics and habits (Cohen et al., 1972; March & Simon, 1958), but rather by projecting the unknown through credible imaginaries.

The way rationalized evaluative tools and accountability mechanisms (see Power, 1997) in a particular institutional field become rather obsolete when assessing pathways holding images of the distant future, as is the case with hype, can be problematic as it means that uncertainty increases. In turn, this may create space for actors to take advantage of hype and its imaginaries; it opens up room for agency. Such agency can be used to drive change on a larger scale, and enable the reorganization of society to meet grand challenges through robust action (Ferraro et al., 2015; George et al., 2016), but it may also for example dismantle institutional structures that prevent authoritarian developments. In short, hype means moving beyond taken-for-granted social and cognitive assumptions of what is possible, moving from an as-if reality to an even-if future (Grimes & Vogus, 2021), encouraging radical thinking, for good or bad, and acting to change systems rather than adhering to, or getting stuck in, established rationalized heuristics and habits of a particular institutional field.

A Process Model of Hype

To summarize our argument, we propose a process model of hype. As outlined in Figure 1, hype stems from the striving towards the goal of hope but becomes attractive precisely because certain actors activate their agency to diverge from the original pathway and engage support for a new one. In turn, this process is influenced by the intimate binding of hope (Snyder et al., 2002), expectations (Logue & Grimes, 2022), and a master-idea (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996). Hype thus entails a certain tilt of the stable rationalized organizing process in a particular institutional field, a conceptual jump (Bronk, 2009) infused with larger ideational dimensions, where an original pathway to hope is put out of play, as a new pathway is positioned as the alternative to realize expectations in an enhanced manner. Driven by hope, expectations, and a master idea of progress, hype allows for ideas, concepts, and practices to be translated in new settings, transforming stable pathways of rationalized organizing—in essence being the institutionalized idea of how to reach desired future states—to performative expectations of future possibilities to reach goals that chart a new, and seemingly better, pathway to desired outcomes.

Figure 1.

Translation processes in hype.

The model outlined in Figure 1 specifies two features of hype that influence their development. One is the process of translation related to hope and connected to a master-idea, which induces hype to involve a range of diverse actors. For hype to develop, it requires mobilization of support throughout the translation process, both to formulate, gather interest and acceptance of hope and to create attention, interest, and legitimacy in the new pathway to change. Many different actors can be involved, and these may also take different roles throughout the process. The translation of a new pathway from one institutional context to another opens up for new rationalities as well as new actor groups to be involved.

The second important feature of our hype model rests on a recognition of context, and the institutional conditions of translation as ideas move between fields. Institutional studies have shown the relevance of “the extent to which sociocultural worlds differ—affects the proponent’s ability to introduce an idea, and the recipient’s ability to make sense of it” (Claus et al., 2021, p. 1498). Kostova (1999) operationalizes such differences between sociocultural worlds as a question of institutional distance, building on the distinction between regulative, normative, and cognitive components of institutions (Scott, 1987). The question of institutional distance in the context of hype may explain why in some cases institutional barriers (Frey-Heger et al., 2021; Greenwood et al., 2008) may be overcome as hype challenges or even disrupts institutions (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). These potentially disrupted institutions may be of a legislative, a normative, or a cognitive character, and their disruption may have potential consequences for individuals, organizations, and society at large.

Three Phases of Hype

Our model of hype distinguishes three phases of the process, providing a way to further theorize the dynamics of hype and chart mechanisms whereby it may challenge, and even disrupt, institutional orders. It also allows us to note the transformation of hype itself through translation. Returning to the notion of master-ideas, Czarniawska and Joerges (1996) suggest that these are particularly powerful at the beginning and at the end of larger institutional changes:

The power of master-ideas resides in the fact that they are taken for granted, unproblematic and used for all possible purposes. At the beginning of the rule of a paradigm, it is its power to excite, to mobilize and to energize that is most noticeable; toward the end, it is its unquestionability, obviousness and taken-for-granted explanatory power. (Czarniawska and Joerges, 1996, p. 37)

For translation in hype, a master-idea provides power to the process of change between institutional fields, or paradigms, potentially entailing the disruption of institutional orders. Taking inspiration from research using the concept of high-stakes translation, meaning translation with moral and transformative implications on a societal level, we posit that these translation processes hold three main phases: an energizing phase, an exploratory phase, and an integrative phase (Lawrence, 2017). In each phase, a distinction can be made between discursive and material translations, which are not always synchronized. In our extrapolation of these phases to analyze the institutional dynamics of hype, the energizing phase captures the ability of hype to “excite, mobilize and energize” (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996, p. 37) as noted above, and takes place as particular ideas are being connected to a new pathway of hope, expected to reach a desired future state. It is here that hope materializes into a distinct pathway for change. In the subsequent exploratory phase, translations are ongoing, and the new pathway is not yet institutionalized, but is gaining visibility and legitimacy. During this second phase, the mobilization of support is prominent. In the third, integrative phase, the new pathway becomes more firmly embedded in the new institutional context but may circumvent institutionalized evaluative accountability practices and thereby thwart rationalized pathways for organizing, expanding its potential scope and reach. In this phase, an immunization of the new pathway has built during the translation process, making hype challenge, and potentially disrupt, institutional orders with impunity. The lack of punishment for breaking institutional barriers enables further translations and new pathways to develop, allowing hype to continue at least in the short run. Our model of the three phases of hype is summarized in Figure 2 and elaborated in more detail below.

Figure 2.

Three phases of translation in hype.

The energizing phase: Materialization

The energizing phase entails the initial materialization of hype that in turn enables further travel. Such material manifestation of hype is central both in the hype cycle model and in translation studies (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996; Van Lente et al., 2013). Yet in contrast to the hype cycle model (Linden & Fenn, 2003), focused on the development of one specific technology or product, the materialization of hype can take many forms, as it becomes connected to a particular master-idea (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996). The master-idea speaks to perennial hope and may be linked to fundamental human desires such as for example wealth and health—but it is in the form of a specific, new pathway that it is able to travel. As such, expectations are formulated in quite specific terms, varying from treating a specific disease to creating a financial revolution. In the energizing phase, the translation of hype thus energizes perennial hope and galvanizes expectations entwined with a master-idea by suggesting a new material pathway, around which energy can be built and mobilized.

While Lawrence (2017) does not necessarily attribute a material aspect to the energizing phase of the translation process, we argue that it is central in the case of hype. It is in the energizing phase that we see the materialization of what is being translated, for example in the form of a medical drug, a business concept, a financial product, or a treatment. Hype may hold multiple such materializations, or pathways, for the same original hope, providing a context for which single pathways can develop. In the case of hype, such a movement involves translation beyond a specific institutional field, as hype encompasses several fields or markets. For instance, hope relating to artificial intelligence may be bound to the master-idea of super-human capacity enhancement, prominent in many different fields, forming expectations to reform for instance medical treatments, public sector organizing, as well as teaching practices in schools, simultaneously. In moving between and across fields, the materialization of hype in a new field is a way to avoid institutional constraints of old pathways. In addition, the new pathways often have clearly defined actors, translators, who are attributed a significant degree of agency (Sewell, 1992) in realizing the goal; the entrepreneurial researcher able to identify new drug candidates, or a larger-than-life leader able to create a digital revolution. This helps legitimate a new pathway of hype.

The exploratory phase: Mobilization of institutional support

As hope has materialized in a new pathway it can diffuse and spread to wide audiences by mobilizing what we term institutional support, mainly through powerful enablers. Paving the way for wide diffusion (Piazza & Abrahamson, 2020), in the exploratory phase the materialization of hope and expectations from the energizing phase create a breeding ground for translation that helps to spiral the hype forward. At this stage not only translators but also a range of other actors, here referred to as enablers, become imperative for the hype to form. For this to happen, the new pathway needs attention (Ocasio, 2011), legitimacy (Suchman, 1995), and an institutional infrastructure that supports it (Hinings et al., 2017; Raynard et al., 2021).

Attention (Ocasio, 2011) may be gained in a range of arenas. That the media plays an important role in creating and sustaining hype is in line with previous research (Gurun & Butler, 2012; Vasterman, 2005), but we can envision that other forms of exhibits also play a role in this phase. Such exhibits provide additional arenas for discussion and promotion, and for making the new pathway reach new and different audiences. These can include, for example, social media platforms, international networks and conferences, as well as single, glitzy events. To further attract attention, the translators from the energizing phase may in the exploratory phase be depicted as charismatic leaders of crowds attracted by the new pathway (Lindholm, 1992; Tiryakian, 1995), with both swagger and passion (Heupel et al., 2024). The discursive translation of hope is now more clearly spelled out and attached to the agency of translators, which may serve the attention rationale well. This builds a particularly powerful narrative of expectations of the future that embodies the hope of the new pathway (see Beckert, 2013), elevated and sustained by rationales of progress, innovation, and success of a master-idea, and, in some cases, also adding an embodied celebrity twist to the story. Such narratives can be used by actors to drive entrepreneurial ventures (Garud et al., 2014; Logue & Grimes, 2022) but are also a requirement for making the conceptual jump (Bronk, 2009) necessary to challenge existing institutions and drive hype.

The new pathway may be legitimized using other popular ideas, concepts, and practices either from the new institutional field into which the pathway is translated, or from adjacent fields, drawing on moral, cognitive, and/or pragmatic bases for legitimation (Suchman, 1995). A new pathway may even be legitimized by another hype, or by other fashionable concepts or models. The key for the legitimation of hype is its promise of novelty and improvement. In the legitimation of the new pathway, as well as in the attention given to it, the public engagement of enablers is key. Such enablers may include investors and other types of funders, professional peers, as well as companies, civil society, and political leaders who may act to legitimate the pathway. These can help not only to grab the attention of broad audiences but also provide the new pathway with some of their own legitimacy in the new institutional field. In cases of hype, Fisher et al. (2016) and also Hampel and Dalpiaz (2025) describe how legitimacy criteria vary over time, depending not only on the development of entrepreneurial ventures but also on their audiences, where ventures need to appeal to different audiences to remain legitimate and acquire and retain resources (Rady et al., 2025). A central concept here is legitimacy buffering, meaning that “ventures build up ‘stocks’ of legitimacy in one institutional setting and so, when transitioning to another, receive greater leeway to comply with the relevant expectations of the new setting” (Fisher et al., 2016, p. 402). Such buffering is also relevant in the case of translation in hype, but here it is the institutions themselves that are potentially subject to change, rather than the venture navigating different institutions.

While legitimacy and attention given to the new pathway are discursively visible in various forms of, for example, media outlets and other exhibits, the materialized translation of the new pathway is also significantly helped by the institutional infrastructure (Hinings et al., 2017; Raynard et al., 2021) provided to it by a range of enablers. These enablers may be the same as the ones supporting the new pathway by means of attention and legitimacy, but they do not necessarily need to be. The institutional infrastructure is grounded in the regulatory, normative, and cognitive institutions of the new institutional field into which the pathway is translated, and can be related to funding opportunities, regulatory practices, or other means of supporting it. This stabilizes the exploratory phase of translation. For example, Garud et al. (2022) describe Uber’s “permissionless entry into existing ecosystems when their products or services violate existing regulations” (p. 449). This illustrates how powerful enablers, and the legitimacy gained from users, made Uber challenge, and eventually revise, regulatory practices of the field.

Attention, legitimacy, and institutional infrastructure are thus important features for hype to form and develop. We summarize these three features as mobilization of institutional support, by this indicating their importance for enabling a materialized new pathway to gain prominence and continue to be used.

The integrative phase: Immunization

In the third, integrative phase of hype, here called immunization, both the material and discursive dimensions of translation become embedded as part of a newly rationalized pathway to realize a goal, potentially forcing institutional barriers (Frey-Heger et al., 2021; Greenwood et al., 2008). Here, opposition, criticism, and disappointments may be most visible and may potentially threaten further travel. Thus, pathways here reach a critical stage where attention and legitimacy either fade or remain, the latter allowing hype to continue. However, even if attention to a specific new pathway begins to fade, hype can continue if hope becomes attached to another pathway, or if hope and expectations are reformulated to relate to an ever more distant future. In such a manner, through powerful narratives (Garud et al., 2014) and images of a distant future (Augustine et al., 2019), hype in the integrative phase may substantially challenge institutionalized measures of control and scrutiny, such as financial regulations, standardized accounting principles, and regulative practices upholding liberal democracy, as well as broader normative practices and cognitive structures of accountability. This allows for both desired and potentially problematic outcomes. Reaching this stage, passing through the previous stages of translation, what was formerly a new pathway has now gained immunization and become rationalized in the new institutional field, allowing the pathway to continue being used despite criticism and rational arguments that may question or critique it.

Tracing this immunization back to the exploratory phase, mobilization of institutional support largely stems from the new field into which the pathway is translated. Here, hype is moving into areas where, for example, relevant regulations, normative objections, and/or cognitive recognition of lack of feasibility of the new pathway are neither well known nor easily accessible. Therefore, the rationality of the arguments from one field does not curb the expectations created in the new context. Instead, immunization builds up, and control procedures may not be in place to scrutinize it. In this new field, accountability mechanisms (Ezzamel et al., 2007) are trumped by arguments about progress and pressing needs of the new field, offering a set of very attractive prospects and expectations of a desired future state.

Based on this, we suggest three reasons why pathways reach immunity. The first is shifting rationalities, as hype involves a translation of a pathway from one institutional field to another during the energizing phase. What are considered rational arguments for the specific pathway in one field are not necessarily seen as rational in the new field. This may not be revealed as the hype develops, most likely because supporting actors have been involved in enabling the new pathway in the exploratory phase, and also because other fields may encourage other mechanisms for evaluation and control (Faulconbridge & Muzio, 2019). In the case of hype, the new pathway has thus escaped certain mechanisms of accountability by being originally translated from another field. The institutional distance (Claus et al., 2021; Kostova, 1999) between these fields will determine the extent to which the control mechanisms and the rationalized arguments used in one field will be of relevance in another. What type of institutions are threatened, and what type of control mechanisms are related to them, will matter here, be they regulative, normative, or cognitive (Scott, 1987).

A second reason for immunity to potential criticism, is because of the images and narratives of a distant future (Augustine et al., 2019) engaged in the translation process. The arguments in favor of a new pathway are always resting on the fact that it should be pathbreaking; it is supposed to break with originally rationalized pathways to reach a desired goal. In formulating expectations for the future, norms of progress and improvement trump original arguments of rationality. For this reason, the very essence of hype is that it breaks with the standardized procedures of the field in which it develops, in many ways re-enacting Schumpeter’s notion of growth through creative destruction (Aghion & Howitt, 1990). It does so by combining features from other fields; this is how innovation is rationalized. This classical argument for innovation is what both translators and enablers in hype can draw on for some time, to continue their efforts and investments in the new pathway despite potentially facing mounting criticism. The newly rationalized pathway, soon no longer being hyped but simply a part of the new state of a (disrupted) institutional order, is deemed necessary for the sake of the distant future (Augustine et al., 2019).

A third reason for immunity is dispersion of responsibility. In the integrative phase, as hype grows and spreads to wider audiences it begins to become institutionalized in the new field. In this process, hype faces similar challenges of accountability and legitimacy that can be seen in polycentric regimes (Black, 2008), which has been well chronicled in the governance literature (Pierre & Peters, 2000). This especially relates to the problem of many hands (Van de Poel et al., 2012), where the responsibility of many may be accounted for by few. In addition, hype may be linked to overblown beliefs in the power of organizing on social media platforms, where lack of institutional oversight is often applauded (Gustafsson & Weinryb, 2019). The growing belief in the newly rationalized pathway thus makes the responsibility to check and to control it dispersed among actors.

Taken together, these features make hype insulated from certain scrutinizing demands and opens up a space for agency and large-scale societal change. The combination of legitimacy from changing fields, shifting rationalities, the power of strong enablers, and mobilization of institutional support, as well as the element of dispersed responsibility and a lack of competence to evaluate the newly rationalized pathway, thus form a potentially powerful blend that opens up space for hype to bring about institutional change, and possibly even significant institutional disruption.

The End of Hype?

Our model of hype shows a process whereby pathways for change become translated into new institutional settings. Does this mean that hype dissipates as a pathway becomes accepted and established in the new field? Not necessarily, at least not in the short run. While attention to a particular pathway may fade as it becomes taken for granted in the new institutional field, thus no longer being hyped, this does not necessarily change the underlying hope and the desire for a better future. Attention can move to another pathway promising to deliver on the same hope, thus sustaining hype at least temporarily. For example, the success of one type of AI solution to improve diagnostics in health care may lead to an increased attention to AI solutions in other areas of health care, such as patient care routines that can help improve efficiency. This way, attention to multiple, and shifting, pathways allow conditions of hype to remain in place even as some pathways become institutionalized.

Over a longer time period, the process model suggests that hype will dissipate as new pathways become accepted and institutionalized in the new field. This way, newly institutionalized pathways become part of the context for subsequent translations. In other words, the new “normal” creates the breeding ground for expectations directed towards the distant future, again opening up for new pathways and new goals of change to develop. In turn, this once again enables a reformulation of original hope, and a new connection of hope and expectations to master-ideas, shifting attention to yet more distant futures. In such a way, new hype may once again develop, as hope for betterment and improvement is a fundamental part of the human condition.

Concluding Discussion

Hype holds expectations about an alternative, and better future, and rationalized pathways of how to reach it. Scholars of hype and expectations have long offered intricate ways of understanding these phenomena as, for example, elements of technological development (Linden & Fenn, 2003; Van Lente et al., 2013), medical breakthroughs (Brown, 2003), new market entries (Pontikes & Barnett, 2017; Wind & Mahajan, 1987), and as driven by entrepreneurial agency (Garud et al., 2014; Logue & Grimes, 2022). Elucidating studies have also emphasized the performative elements (Beckert, 2013; Borup et al., 2006) of future imaginaries (Augustine et al., 2019; Levy & Spicer, 2013). Yet while explaining developments in specific markets or fields, and also recognizing the importance of institutions (Fisher et al., 2016; Spivack et al., 2025), this literature has not directly addressed the ability of hype to potentially alter institutions. In this paper we offer a way to explore the processes whereby hype takes form and develops across institutional settings, opening space to understand how hype may also challenge and even disrupt institutions.

Aided by theory on translation of ideas (Czarniawska & Sevón, 1996; Wedlin & Sahlin, 2017), we suggest that hype can be conceived as a process that develops through particular materializations of ideas, linking these to hopes and expectations of the future. In this process, hype binds material and discursive manifestations to specific master-ideas (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996), with hope for progress and improvement (Brunsson, 2006; Snyder et al., 2002), and expectations (Logue & Grimes, 2022), enabling its spread and impact. It is through such travel that hype gains, and maintains, attention and legitimacy, opening up room for change. Our model specifies three mechanisms whereby hype develops and enables institutional change: materialization, mobilization, and immunization. These mechanisms help to build and mobilize support among actors and audiences for a specific pathway, and to create room for agency.

Understanding hype as a process rather than an outcome adds to the hype literature by rendering greater explanatory force to the possibly vast individual, organizational, and societal consequences of entrepreneurial actions. While individual actors can use elements of hype as cultural resources to gain attention and resources for their own entrepreneurial ventures, our process model of hype suggests that these elements are part of a larger movement of ideas and pathways that make up hype. Here, a broader set of actors needs to be included to explain how hype develops and may impact one or more institutional fields; a varied set of translators but also enablers, that legitimate and support the spread of hype beyond a specific setting. Actors and actions in one institutional field form the context of other actors and pathways to develop in another field, which may interrelate with or contribute to the further development of hype. Using a translation lens, we can understand how single processes, products, or pathways to change in a combined way thus may contribute not only to specific entrepreneurial processes, but to processes of institutional change. Importantly, they do so without necessarily being centrally organized or dictated.

Our model of hype contributes to the translation literature by specifying the process of idea travel in cases of hype. By looking beyond individual translation processes and their outcome, we point to the role of a broader ecosystem of ideas, actors, and translations that shape any single translation process (Wedlin & Sahlin, 2017; Westney & Piekkari, 2020). In doing so, we elaborate the role and importance of specific master-ideas in translation (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996), thereby revitalizing an important but largely ignored aspect in much translation research. By explicitly theorizing the embeddedness of translation processes both in master-ideas of progress and development, and in multiple institutional contexts, our model also provides specific means to understand, identify, and further theorize the agency and activities of a broader set of actors involved in translation, as well as to identify the potential implications of these efforts for institutional disruption and change (see Dacin et al., 2002). Our model provides a tool to empirically study multiple translation processes, specifically recognizing the importance of translations that develop across institutional fields with varying institutional distance (Claus et al., 2021; Kostova, 1999).

In a world facing a range of grand challenges (Grimes & Vogus, 2021; Levy & Spicer, 2013), as well as a serious push towards authoritarian governing modes of society under the guise of rationality, it is imperative to learn about the potential institutional implications of hype. We hope that our model of hype as a process of translation will spur a variety of empirical investigations, further exploring the institutional dynamics of hype and its potentially disruptive institutional consequences.