Institutional Work

Whereas institutional approaches to organizational studies have traditionally tended to focus on the relationship between organizations and their respective fields, the institutional work literature examines how action affects institutions (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006; Lawrence et al., 2009; Lawrence et al., 2011), a critical area of inquiry for understanding institutional creation. Defined as “the purposive action of individuals and organizations aimed at creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions” (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006, p. 215), the concept of work adopted in this literature is inspired by studies of everyday tasks, which have explored concepts such as emotion work (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991; Rafaeli & Sutton, 1987); identity work (Snow & Anderson, 1987; Ibarra & Barbulescu, 2010); boundary work (Zietsma & Lawrence, 2010; Fournier, 2000); strategic work (Goodstein, 1994); practice work (Zietsma & Lawrence 2010; Lawrence et al., 2009) and value work (Crank, 2003).

Institutional work theory has been combined with a range of other perspectives to analyze particular cases. Notable examples include Martí and Fernandez’s (2013) research on the Holocaust, which links institutional work theory with the sociological literature on power. Focusing particularly on dynamics of oppression and resistance, and recognizing that power and institutions are intimately related, Martí and Fernandez’s (2013) analysis of specific types of work provides a novel study of how institutional work can be both a means of achieving as well as expressing power (Rojas, 2010; Lawrence et al., 2013). In a different vein, Helfen & Sydow (2013) link institutional work to the industrial relations literature (McKersie & Walton, 1991), analyzing the impact of negotiation work across boundaries. Such forms of work require both

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contestation and joint problem-solving (Hargrave & Van De Ven, 2006), in the pursuit of creating a new institution (Helfen & Sydow, 2013).

Similarly to these examples, the research that I have engaged with links institutional work to the PES literature. While PES may often simplistically be interpreted as creating incentives that work to change individual and collective behavior (Muradian et al., 2010), I study how establishing PES amid complex social norms and hierarchies necessitate concerted institutional work. One example, found in Article #2, discussed below, integrates institutional work with network theory. Institutional work studies suggest actors engage in specific forms of institutional work that not only define themselves but in addition locate themselves alongside other actors in normative networks (Lawrence et al., 2013; Lawrence et al., 2011). Thus, the type of institutional work engaged in reflects and affects actors’ position and affiliations within institutional fields (Battilana et al., 2009; Lawrence et al., 2013; Lawrence et al., 2011). For example, Article #2 discussed below utilizes network data and clustering techniques to demonstrate that organizations specialize in particular profiles of institutional work, which then lead to different positions in normative networks engaged in building PES initiatives for forest protection.

Importantly, the theory of institutional work emphasizes that actors do not have a simplistic organizational awareness (Hirsch & Lounsbury, 1997), instead, this perspective studies the socialization of individuals and groups and how they engage with institutions (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). This concept moves past the assumed dominance of institutions (DiMaggio, 1988) by arguing stakeholders’ exercise skill and reflexivity when interacting and engaging with institutions (Hirsch & Lounsbury, 1997). Actors are assumed boundedly rational, in that they work within institutionally-defined logics that shape their actions (March & Olsen, 1996), but they also can harness their competencies and knowledge in a creative fashion to pursue their objectives (Giddens, 1984; Cassell, 1993). Article #1, discussed below, demonstrates that an understanding of the importance of innovation and agency in institutional construction in generally lacking in traditional literature on PES. The importance of such agency is illustrated in Article #4, which details the strategic conflicts shaping the evolution of MSIs like the RSPO. Growing efforts to date have studied how new institutional innovations emerge, compete and resolve incongruent logics and practice over time. Institutional theories have been criticized for

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overemphasizing institutional stability, which makes social systems resilient to change (Bengtsson, 2008). Faced with the Anthropocene, new forms of institutional experimentation, presently described as proto-institutions, that emerge as implemented modes of action suitable to solve new problems. Lawrence et al. (2002, p. 281) define proto-institutions as “new practices, rules, and technologies that transcend a particular collaborative relationship and may become new institutions if they diffuse sufficiently.” Similar to conceptions of the process leading to institutionalization (Galaz et al., 2012b; Österblom & Folke, 2013), Lawrence et al. (2002) see proto-institutions as emerging from elaboration and routinization of existing networks of collaboration. Articles #2 and #3 investigate these issues of institutional emergence from empirical and conceptual perspectives.

PES might also be seen as an opportunity to apply the notion of institutional logics. Originally introduced by Alford and Friedland (1985) as a tool to explain the contradictory practices and beliefs inherent in western society, the discussion of institutional logics has since evolved: “to understand individual and organizational behavior, it must be located in a social and institutional context, and this institutional context both regularizes behavior and provides opportunity for agency and change” (Thornton & Ocasio, 2008, p. 102). While institutional logics frameworks agree that organizational structures are influenced and shaped by both cultural rules and cognitive structures, the focus on isomorphism is less of a concern (Thornton and Ocasio, 2008). Rather, attention centers on how institutional logics shape boundedly rational behavior, where individuals and organizations engage in both shaping and changing logics (Thornton, 2008). In this way, institutional logics constitute a bridge between the micro and the macro level, by providing a link between action and institutions (Thornton and Ocasio, 1999). In order to account for structural, symbolic, and normative dimensions, Thornton and Ocasio (1999, p. 804) define institutional logics as “… the socially constructed, historical patterns of material practices, assumptions, values, beliefs, and rules by which individuals produce and reproduce their material subsistence, organize time and space, and provide meaning to their social reality.”

While useful when extending the research agenda, however, the institutional logics perspective was not deemed relevant for the present construction of this study. The reasoning here is the empirical focus of the current phase of research is on institutional construction. In other words, my research is concerned with the process by which institutions – and their concomitant logics –

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are produced in the first place, whereas the institutional logics perspective helps understand boundedly rational choices and actions within already established logics. This does not mean, however, that the organizational institutionalist literature beyond institutional work did not inform my research. While institutional work is my primary tool for exploring the creation of PES as an institution, it was also clear that during periods of contention, the meaning of PES is subject to contentious framing and counter framing (Snow et al., 1986; Goffman, 1974; Benford & Snow, 2000). As Snow, et al. (1986: 469), put it, “support for and participation in movement activities is frequently contingent on the clarification and reinvigoration of an interpretive frame.” Through this process of reinterpretation, an organization can redirect the evolution of the PES field in ways more consistent with their core values (Rokeach, 1973; Killian & Turner, 1972).

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Visual Abstract

Advancing the Payments for Ecosystem Service Discourse Through Institutional Theory

Research Problem: Design for Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs have very “thin” models of institutions, largely derived from transaction cost economics, which leads would-be institutional workers to adopt a “field of dreams” approach to institution building: “if you build it, they will come.”

Research Question: How are institutions in support of PES

created? Article Research Question

A1) The Mundane Work of Building Payments for Ecosystem Services

How has institutional emergence figured in the PES literature to date, and with what effects?

A2) Institutional Working as Institutional Networking: Building Transnational Anti- Deforestation Efforts

What kinds of institutional work are undertaken during the emergence of PES, and by whom?

A3) Payments for Ecosystem Services: Rife with Problems and Potential—for Transformation towards Sustainability

What opportunities and deficiencies of PES as a mechanism are visible from existing experiments? A4) The “Teenage” Years:

Organizational Interests and the Evolution of Private Standards

How do concerns about reputational risk drive the emergence of private sustainability standards?

Theoretical Approach – Institutional Work

“Institutions are created through considerable, but mundane, effort expended in ongoing negotiations, experimentation, competition and learning, which resolve over time into shared conceptions of problems and solutions in organizational fields”

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