Institutions and Organizations: A Process View

Institutions - the structures, practices, and meanings that define what people and organizations think, do, and aspire to - are created through process. They are 'work in progress' that involves continual efforts to maintain, modify, or disturb them. Institutional logics are also in motion, holding varying degrees of dominance that change over time. This volume brings together two streams of thought within organization theory - institutional theory and process perspective - to advocate for stronger process ontology that highlights institutions as emergent, generative, political, and social.

A stronger process view allows us to challenge our understanding of central concepts within institutional theory, such as 'loose coupling', 'institutional work', the work of institutional logics on the ground, and institutionalization between diffusion and translation. Enriched with an emphasis on practice and widened by taking a broad view of institutions, this volume draws on the Ninth International Symposium on Process Organization Studies to offer key insights that will inform our thinking of institutions as processes.

Trish Reay, Professor in Strategic Management and Organization, School of Business, University of Alberta,Tammar B. Zilber, Associate Professor of Organization Theory, Jerusalem School of Business, The Hebrew University,Ann Langley, Professor of Management, HEC Montreal,Haridimos Tsoukas, Columbia Ship Management Chair of Strategic Management, University of Cyprus

Trish Reay is Professor in Strategic Management and Organization at the University of Alberta School of Business in Edmonton, Canada. She also holds a Visiting Distinguished Professor appointment at Warwick Business School. She currently serves as Editor-in-Chief at Organization Studies. Her research interests include qualitative research methods, organizational and institutional change, and professions and professional identity. She studies these topics in the context of health care and family firms. Published articles from these research streams appear in Academy of Management Journal, Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Work and Occupations, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, and Family Business Review.


Tammar B. Zilber is Associate Professor of Organization Theory at the Jerusalem School of Business, The Hebrew University, Israel. Her research focuses on the dynamics of meaning and action in institutional processes. Focusing on the micro-foundations of institutions, and using qualitative methods, she examines the role of discursive acts (like narrating) in constructing institutional realities; the institutional work involved in creating and maintaining fields, given field multiplicity; spatial and emotional mediations of institutional dynamics; the interrelations between institutional logics and institutional work; and the translation of institutions over time and across social spheres.


Ann Langley is Professor of Strategic Management at HEC Montreal, Canada and holder of the Canada research chair in strategic management in pluralistic settings. Her research focuses on strategic change, inter-professional collaboration and the practice of strategy in complex organizations. She is particularly interested in process-oriented research and methodology and has published a number of papers on that topic. In 2013, she was co-guest editor with Clive Smallman, Haridimos Tsoukas and Andrew Van de Ven of a Special Research Forum of Academy of Management Journal Process Studies of Change in Organizations and Management. She is also co-editor of the journal Strategic Organization.

Haridimos Tsoukas (www.htsoukas.com) holds the Columbia Ship Management Chair in Strategic Management at the Department of Business and Public Administration, University of Cyprus, and is a Distinguished Research Environment Professor of Organization Studies at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, UK. He is the co-founder and co-organizer of the International Symposium on Process Organization Studies (with Ann Langley). His research is informed by process philosophy, phenomenology, and neo-Aristotelian perspectives on reason and the social. His interests include: knowledge-based perspectives on organizations and management; organizational becoming; practical reason in management and policy studies; and meta-theoretical issues in organizational issues in organizational and management research.