Over the past couple of decades, the institutional logics perspective (Thornton, Ocasio, & Lounsbury, Reference Thornton, Ocasio and Lounsbury2012/2020) has become a central theory in organizational sociology and management. And while the literature has exploded, there is much more research that is needed – especially in non-Western contexts such as China. Our aim in this paper is to complement and extend the arguments of Haveman, Joseph-Goteiner, and Li (Reference Haveman, Joseph-Goteiner and Li2023) to contribute to the development of a broader research agenda on institutional logics. We draw on some recent writings (e.g., Lounsbury & Wang, Reference Lounsbury and Wang2020; Lounsbury, Steele, Wang, & Toubiana, Reference Lounsbury, Steele, Wang and Toubiana2021) that provide a slightly different orientation towards the conceptualization and contemporary problematics of institutional logics scholarship, and then discuss implications for research in China.
To begin, while the institutional logics perspective is profoundly cultural in its orientation, informed by the cultural turn that swept across the social sciences and humanities in the late 20th century (e.g., Friedland & Mohr, Reference Friedland and Mohr2004), it is important to emphasize that most logics research since the seminal paper by Friedland and Alford (Reference Friedland, Alford, Powell and DiMaggio1991) has emphasized that logics are relatively enduring configurations of symbolic beliefs and material practices. Somewhat differently, Haveman, Joseph-Goteiner, and Li (Reference Haveman, Joseph-Goteiner and Li2023) note the importance of practice, but they conceptualize logics and practice as relatively distinct, albeit interrelated. We prefer to conceptualize practices as more fundamental to the concept of logic and believe that the most powerful scholarship on institutional logics is undergirded by a practice theoretic approach to culture (e.g., Bourdieu, Reference Bourdieu1998; Lizardo & Strand, Reference Lizardo and Strand2010; Swidler, Reference Swidler1986) that accords practices a more central role in both theory and empirical analysis.
The implication of this conceptualization is that logics cannot be fully understood via traditional approaches to tracking culture such as discourse analysis but often require a deeper analysis of the sayings and doings of people in situ (Schatzki, Reference Schatzki2019). Friedland (Reference Friedland2012: 594) recently emphasized the need to focus on the ‘inner architecture’ of logics – leveraging new structuralist methods (e.g., Friedland, Mohr, Roose, & Gardinali, Reference Friedland, Mohr, Roose and Gardinali2014; Lounsbury & Ventresca, Reference Lounsbury and Ventresca2003; Mohr, Reference Mohr1998; Mohr & Duquenne, Reference Mohr and Duquenne1997; Mohr et al., Reference Mohr, Bail, Frye, Lena, Lizardo, McDonnell, Mische, Tavory and Wherry2020) to identify logics as clusters of practices, meanings, and actors. This direction begins to address recent critiques of logics research about the tendency to focus on logics as reified explanatory tools as opposed to studying them as complex phenomena in their own right, embodied in people who enact, promulgate, and alter the nature of logics on the ground (Furnari, Reference Furnari2020; Ocasio & Gai, Reference Ocasio and Gai2020; Ocasio, Mauskapf, & Steele, Reference Ocasio, Mauskapf and Steele2016; Quattrone, Reference Quattrone2015; Toubiana, Reference Toubiana2020).
We have argued elsewhere (Lounsbury & Wang, Reference Lounsbury and Wang2020; Lounsbury et al., Reference Lounsbury, Steele, Wang and Toubiana2021) that to expand the scope of logics scholarship in this direction, it is fruitful to focus on the problems of institutional logic durability and cohesion, as well as the constitutive nature of logics. This would help us develop a richer understanding of how the various elements associated with logics interlink or cluster to form a coherent and recognizable pattern that is maintained over appreciable periods of time. China, as a country having the longest continuous history in the world, provides a rare context for examining the limits of a durable state logic and how it has co-evolved over centuries alongside other important societal logics such as a robust family logic and a more recently re-emergent market logic (Ge & Micelotta, Reference Ge and Micelotta2019). Not only does China present a noticeably different configuration of logics compared to many Western civilizations, but studying the ways through which such logics become coherent and maintained in history can also provide new insights to our understanding of logics. Echoing the arguments of Haveman and colleagues (Reference Haveman, Joseph-Goteiner and Li2023), the study of logics as complex phenomena can benefit greatly from a more historical perspective (see also Lounsbury et al., Reference Lounsbury, Steele, Wang and Toubiana2021; Wang, Steele, & Greenwood, Reference Wang, Steele and Greenwood2019).
Moreover, by focusing on the constitutive nature of logics, we can better explore how China offers an alternative organizing logic for a global economic and political order that might be competing with the Western liberal model of democratic capitalism (Meyer, Reference Meyer2010). The so-called China Model, or Beijing Consensus (as opposed to the Washington Consensus), for example, represents a viable alternative logic for many developing countries. By adopting a more pragmatic logic to achieve robust economic growth, China has become the second-largest economy after the global financial crisis, which legitimized ‘the notion of particularity as opposed to the universality of a Washington model' (Elen, Reference Elen2016). Seeking to export an alternative to the Western configuration of state, market, and corporate logics to the world through cultural and economic expansion projects such as the Belt and Road Initiative, China unavoidably agitates the US and other Western regimes. However, whether China's alternative logic and order might become recognized and durable in other societies is worth further exploration.
An additional way of studying logics as complex phenomena is to investigate the ways by which they evolve or are maintained in response to transformational societal changes. While China provides the longest continuous history of any country, it has also gone through major societal changes in the past several decades. Here, we concur with Haveman and colleagues that ‘large-scale changes in Chinese society and economy impelled dramatic changes in the logics guiding the organization and operation (indeed, the very existence) of business organizations'. Yet, in addition to studying how shifts in the logics are manifested in the strategies and behavior of Chinese firms (see also Liu, Zhang, & Jing, Reference Liu, Zhang and Jing2016; Wei, Reference Wei2017), we believe that more research is needed on the changes in the nature of logics themselves. In particular, China's economic transition from a command to a market economic system offers countless research opportunities for exploring the durability, elasticity, and decay of various logics. How does a powerful state logic shape and become reshaped by a rising market logic? How do the state and professional regulators co-govern a re-emerging professional logic? And how is a community logic constituted at the interstices of the state and market logics?
For example, we need more research directed towards the evolving logic of family and clan (zongzu). Building on Haveman et al.'s (Reference Haveman, Joseph-Goteiner and Li2023) call for future research on how the family logic affects firms in China (either in terms of R&D or corporate governance), we encourage research that also unpacks how the family logic is evolving and is maintained within an ecology of logics that varies across time and space. In a recent paper, we take a step in this direction by exploring how a strong local logic of family and clan in a coastal city in China was increasingly affected by a rising market logic by digging into the formation of political coalitions both within and between organizations (Wang & Lounsbury, Reference Wang and Lounsbury2021). We find that actors in the same generation or cohort, and who share common geographic socialization, are more likely to form allies in changing or maintaining the logics they uphold. Further research on how institutional complexity involving a multiplicity of logics plays out in different organizational contexts and communities is critically needed (see also Marquis & Raynard, Reference Marquis and Raynard2015; Raynard, Lounsbury, & Greenwood, Reference Raynard, Lounsbury and Greenwood2013)
A separate, yet equally exciting opportunity is to look into the re-emerging professional logic. As Haveman and colleagues (Reference Haveman, Joseph-Goteiner and Li2023) rightly pointed out, the market transition formally severed ties between the profession and the state despite the fact that professionals are still deeply intertwined with the state. In the healthcare context, for example, public hospitals remain largely supervised and commanded by the government to uphold a social welfare logic but simultaneously receive market pressure to generate profit, whereas private hospitals are increasingly shaped by the market logic. How do state, market, and professional actors together govern the professional logic? Through a longitudinal case study, for example, Wang, Raynard, and Greenwood (Reference Wang, Raynard and Greenwood2021) show that market encroachment on the medical profession has led to its stigmatization. However, more research is needed to examine how the professional logic may be governed – whether as an independent domain of institutional life or as a vassal logic to more dominant logics in China.
Last but not least, we contend that the logics perspective can help us to better understand grand challenges. Living in an age of disruption, we face the ‘new normal', characterized by various grand challenges ranging from rising nationalism and threats to globalization to the enduring problems of climate change and social and economic inequality. China, as a key global player in combatting such grand challenges, provides important empirical settings for studying the rise and decline of societal logics. For example, Ansari, Wijen, and Gray (Reference Ansari, Wijen and Gray2013) have shown how a logic of climate change can be constructed over time by multiple actors. However, we need more research into how the various elements associated with different grand challenges cluster to form a coherent pattern that is recognizable and actionable. In sum, while we might have a slightly different approach to the study of institutional logics than suggested by Haveman et al. (Reference Haveman, Joseph-Goteiner and Li2023), we believe that we are in agreement that the institutional logics perspective offers a particularly promising pathway to understand a multitude of complex societal changes that are unfolding in China and around the world – this short commentary only scratches the surface of the expanded scholarly agenda that we have in mind.
Michael Lounsbury ([email protected]) is a Professor and A.F. (Chip) Collins Chair in the Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Management Department at the University of Alberta School of Business, where he is also the Academic Director of the eHUB entrepreneurship centre. He is also the series editor of Research in the Sociology of Organizations. His PhD is in Sociology and Organization Behavior from Northwestern University.
Milo Shaoqing Wang ([email protected]) is an assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship at Arizona State University's W. P. Carey School of Business. He received his PhD from the University of Alberta. His research interests focus on social evaluations, institutional theory, ESG, and governance.
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