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When Institutional Work Backfires: Organizational Control of Professional Work in the Pharmaceutical Industry
Author(s) -
Singh Jagdip,
Jayanti Rama K.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of management studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.398
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1467-6486
pISSN - 0022-2380
DOI - 10.1111/joms.12022
Subject(s) - business , work (physics) , pharmaceutical industry , control (management) , public relations , industrial organization , management , economics , political science , engineering , medicine , mechanical engineering , pharmacology
Integrating institutional and role theories, this paper develops a Logics–Roles–Action ( LRA ) framework for understanding how for‐profit organizations structure institutional work to managerially control the work of professionals they employ. Structurally, this institutional work involves three elements: (1) internalizing pluralistic logics (logics); (2) institutionalizing distinct roles embedded in these logics (roles); and (3) scripting goal‐oriented role enactment plans (action). An empirical examination of the LRA framework in the pharmaceutical industry evidences four distinct organizational strategies that script role enactments of sales professionals in their interactions with physicians. Each strategy is intended to reaffirm prevailing institutional logics, but eventually backfires by disrupting the very institutional structures that it seeks to maintain and replicate. We show that this disruptive effect is mediated by changes in the social knowledge of institutional work. We close with theoretical and managerial implications for organizational structuring of institutional work and dynamics of institutional change.