The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure and Process

“The Institutional Logics Perspective is an essential road map to and program for the future development of theories of institutional logic. Thornton, Ocasio, and Lounsbury offer a host of uncharted, under-theorized, unthought, and unexplored causal mechanisms linking the macro and the micro, practice and interaction, value and identity. The authors lay out the inter-institutional system, the doubleness of rationality, the cultural contingency of interest, the ideality of material practice, and the ways in which we have mistakenly assumed that institution effaces agency and hence politics. We are going to have to think and work this text for a while.”–Roger O. Friedland, Professor of Religious Studies and Sociology, U.C. Santa Barbara

“Over the past generation, neoinstitutional theory has become perhaps the dominant perspective in the sociology of organizations. The institutional logics perspective has became an intriguing alternative that seeks to encompass and extend the insights of neoinstitutionalism to both lower and higher units of analysis. This book goes farther than any prior work in advancing the institutional logics perspective.”–Gerald F. Davis, Wilbur K. Pierpont Collegiate Professor of Management, Ross School of Business, the University of Michigan

“This book is a must-read. Thornton, Ocasio and Lounsbury take stock, in a poised and systematic manner, of what has been achieved so far by the Institutional Logics perspective. They also point to what remains to be done. Building on a rich heritage, the Institutional Logics perspective threads the path to new and exciting frontiers–a multi-levels theory of institutions, the stabilization of solid micro-foundations, a refreshing return to history and the exploration of the dynamics of identities. The agenda is attractive and this book develops a highly useful road map.”–Marie-Laure Djelic, Professor, ESSEC Business School

“In The Institutional Logics Perspective, Thornton, Ocasio, and Lounsbury have crafted a foundational treatise that will be a touchstone for future inquiry on logics. As an explanation for how actors, actions, and context come together in organizational and institutional settings, the institutional logics perspective has found a broad and diverse audience; this book will only widen its appeal. The authors break fresh theoretical ground and offer a solid conceptual footing for the study of logics; as such, the book has much to recommend it.”–Administrative Science Quarterly