Professionalism from an Institutional Logics View

This article illustrates how the theory of institutional logics can be used for analyzing the identity of social workers and clients, focusing on people processing that precedes treatment (control access, assessment, and treatment deliberation, among others). The article has two research questions: (1) What identities of social workers and clients can be distinguished by institutional logics? (2) How are identities intertwined in practice (exemplified by well-established decision-making models such as evidence-based practice, family group conference, and government by voucher)? Identity is examined using institutional logics and the findings reported in the current body of social work literature. The article derives two conclusions. The first conclusion is that institutional logics can be used for distinguishing ideal type identities: three client identities, namely taken care of community member (community logic), active citizen (participatory democracy logic), and consumer (market logic); and three social worker identities, namely professional (professional logic), bureaucrat (State logic), and executor of management directives (corporation logic). The second conclusion is that identities and institutional logics coexist in well-established models for processing people and treatment deliberation, but the conditions for coexistence differ. For instance, evidence-based practice is characterized by segregation (a bureaucratic and a professional alignment have been separated from the original version of EBP), whereas family group conference and government by voucher are typified by assimilation (logics coexist with the core elements of original logics preserved). Keywords: social work, institutional logics, people processing, decision-making

Professionals’ perceptions of safety related thinking in aircraft maintenance operations are still underrepresented, despite increased of safety research in aviation industry. By employing an institutional logics (ILs) theory, this article aims to explain how ILs influence safety perceptions, practices and behaviours in organizational safety. Based on a case study in an under-studied context, 13 semi-structured interviews were conducted with aircraft maintenance engineers in an airline based in MENA region. The interviews focused mainly on family and religion logics and how they interact with actors’ safety perceptions and practices. The findings showed that safety practices and perceptions were strongly influenced by cultural values and religious beliefs. For the first time, this article reveals that ILs offer valuable insights into the logic of family and religion in the context of aircraft maintenance safety and operations. The results showed that these logics play a basic approach in organizational safety. This study advances the current safety research in aviation and ILs literature in addressing the contextual elements on safety perception and practices of organizational safety. Therefore, it demonstrates that investigating safety perception through ILs framework improves our comprehension of safety and offers a number of explanations for safety related behaviours and beliefs that might otherwise have been perceived as illogical. Safety managers, experts, and accident investigators can assess aviation safety incidents and accidents and their prevention measures through the use of ILs approach. Keywords: Accident investigations, Institutional logics, Organizational safety, Safety perceptions, Aircraft maintenance, Aviation safety.

Purpose Community-based social enterprises (CBSEs) face distinctive challenges in creating hybrid values within localised contexts. While intermediaries – specialist organisations mediating transactions and interactions – are crucial actors in supporting social enterprises (SEs), their contributions to CBSEs remain underexplored. This paper aims to examine the roles of intermediaries in supporting the development of CBSEs in China and Japan, where the SE sector has evolved under distinct yet complementary contexts. In addition, it aims to elucidate how intermediaries supporting CBSEs differ from those assisting SEs more generally. Design/methodology/approach This research draws on ecological system theory (EST) and institutional logic theory, allowing for a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of intermediaries. The authors conducted eight qualitative case studies with a comparative perspective, collecting data through semi-structured interviews, documents and field observations. Afterwards, thematic analysis was pursued to analyse the data. Findings The findings reveal that, in both countries, intermediaries serve as “external enablers” for CBSEs, playing a crucial role in facilitating and mediating across multiple systems. While intermediaries differ in their incorporation and approaches, community logic – an institutional logic informed by local context – guides their strategic pursuit. Originality/value This paper provides empirical evidence on the understudied role of intermediaries in Asian contexts, particularly those supporting CBSEs. The authors highlight two theoretical contributions. First, this research extends the application of EST. Second, it develops the theoretical discussion on community logic and the territoriality of intermediaries.

Collaborative approaches are increasingly promoted to strengthen research connections between universities and school practices and indorse improvements. In Sweden, a national initiative launched in 2017 aiming to enhance the scientific foundations of teacher training and strengthen relevant research through a trial project creating sustainable structures for collaboration between schools and universities. Universities providing teacher education were expected to translate national ambitions into opportunities for collaboration with schools. This paper draws on an evaluation of six Swedish universities’ realization of this initiative, empirically based on survey responses and group interviews. Using institutional logics theory, we discern and interpret key elements of collaboration logics and characteristics of distinct identified logics. Our analysis identifies three configurations of logics: the Explorer, the Organizer, and the Competitor. We highlight the benefits and drawbacks of these logics and their relations with prevailing university logics. The paper contributes an institutional perspective on collaborative approaches between universities and schools, suggesting that links between organizational and field logics play important roles that have been largely neglected in much of the literature.

For the past two decades, many developing countries have begun to experiment with results-oriented reforms to make their governments more competitive. However, very few studies explore the question of the applicability and appropriateness of Western-oriented reforms in non-Western contexts. Based on theories of new institutionalism and institutional logics, this article examines some of the organizational, cultural, and political assumptions that are implicit in Western-styled reforms; how they may conflict with the institutional contexts of many developing countries; and how the conflicts may impact reform strategies and results. The article then recommends how future comparative research can focus more on inter-institutional layering problems. It also suggests a few hypotheses for future empirical works that are interested in exploring further the dynamics between institutional gap, implementation strategies, and leadership characteristics of results-oriented reforms.

How institutional logics shape fairness in crowdsourcing: The case of Threadless

There has been growing concern about privacy and security risks towards electronic-government (e-government) services adoption. Though there are positive results of e- government, there are still other contestable challenges that hamper success of e-government services. While many of the challenges have received considerable attention, there is still little to no firm research on others such as privacy and security risks, effects of infrastructure both in urban and rural settings. Other concerns that have received little consideration are how for instance; e-government serves as a function of perceived usefulness, ease of use, perceived benefit, as well as cultural dimensions and demographic constructs in South Africa. Guided by technology acceptance model, privacy calculus, Hofstede cultural theory and institutional logic theory, the current research sought to examine determinants of e- government use in developing countries. Anchored upon the aforementioned theories and background, the current study proposed three recommendations as potential value chain, derived from e-government service in response to citizens (end- user) support, government and community of stakeholders.

While CSR awards are widely used to promote ethical conduct, their potential to paradoxically generate unintended consequences by intensifying symbolic compliance has been largely overlooked. Based on institutional logic theory, we theorize that rivals’ CSR awards heighten the conflict between market and social logics for non-winning firms, driving them towards CSR decoupling. Using a difference-in-differences model with 1,518 firm-year observations of Chinese publicly listed firms from 2010 to 2019, we find that after rivals have won CSR awards, non-winning firms significantly increase CSR decoupling. Furthermore, competitive intensity and award rarity strengthen the effect of rivals’ CSR awards on non-winning firms’ CSR decoupling. Our findings enhance the understanding of institutional complexity, while extending the research on CSR decoupling and awards by identifying the negative inter-organizational spillover effect of CSR awards. Practically, the results suggest that regulators should strengthen monitoring, enforcement, and transparency mechanisms to ensure that CSR award systems foster substantive rather than symbolic compliance.

Contemporary politics has become increasingly reliant on scientific knowledge. In evidence-based policymaking, science is invoked to address complex, ‘wicked’ problems. Yet, policymakers do not necessarily base decisions on the best-available evidence, and models of knowledge used in policymaking have long been criticised as simplistic. Therefore, collaboration with non-scientific actors has emerged as a possible way forward. On both sides of the policy–science nexus, collaborative interactions are extended to include ‘stakeholders’ to improve the impact of knowledge (that is, its usability and applicability). And while stakeholder involvement often follows this overarching justification, the question of stakeholder rationales for participating in these processes has previously received little scholarly attention. To address this gap, this article analyses stakeholder rationales, asking why organisations get involved in collaborative research. The theoretical expectations about divergent organisational rationales, drawing on theories of institutional and organisational logics, are investigated through an exploratory case study of stakeholders engaged in collaborative research projects in Norway. The theoretical and empirical analysis form the basis for a proposed new typology of stakeholder rationales. In this way, the article contributes towards the development of better tools for understanding and assessing the sources and potential pathways of knowledge, shaped by self-interested actors, making its way into policymaking processes, often as ‘neutral’ evidence.

While enjoying the respect and prestige in some countries, in others, despite being a significant educational sector, vocational education continues to suffer from low status and negative societal sentiments. Vocational education in China has been positioned at the bottom of the educational hierarchy, absorbing the ‘left-over’ students with ‘less good’ academic records. Addressing the research gap concerning the limited philosophical discourses about the academic/vocational divide from non-Western traditions, this paper seeks to explore the philosophical and historical heritage of the academic/vocational divide and how Confucianism may contribute to this divide and shaped the hierarchy of work in China. The Confucian literati, as ‘the privileged other’, determined the social rank of ‘those who labour with their strength’ and ‘those who labour with their minds’ through the Imperial Examination System. By using institutional logics theory, the paper explores how the legacy of these views may have negatively impacted on the standing of occupations and vocational education in contemporary Chinese society and argues that an alternative philosophical orientation is needed to counter the long-standing consequences for vocational education.

The reform of public institutions has attracted sustained attention in both scholarship and policymaking. Increasingly, however, there is growing recognition that reforms are rarely implemented in an institutional vacuum. Instead, new reforms are layered onto existing arrangements, producing hybrid institutional landscapes shaped by prior reform trajectories. Drawing on institutional logics theory, this study examines how contemporary reforms interact with what the paper terms ‘community logics’, a form of relational governance rooted in shared norms, reciprocity and collective responsibility, through a case study of the Nigerian Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS). Based on interviews with tax officials, advisers, and other stakeholders, the study argues for recognising community logics as a distinct mode of institutional organising and for acknowledging their ambivalent role in both enabling and constraining reform. The study contributes to public administration and development by advancing an understanding of public organisations as communities, rather than solely as rule‐bound bureaucracies, and by showing that even technically justified reforms can strain legitimacy if they are incompatible with existing institutional settlements. It also offers several implications for policy and practice in countries with similar institutional characteristics.

This dissertation explores how religion-based solidarity initiatives (RSIs) operate within a secularising welfare context. Despite the dominance of secular state-funded social services in Western Europe, RSIs continue to play a vital yet often overlooked role in supporting individuals in vulnerable situations - particularly those underserved by conventional welfare systems, such as undocumented migrants and people experiencing homelessness. This dissertation provides the first systematic and empirical mapping of RSIs in Flanders, examining their diversity, defining characteristics, and interactions with local government. The work is situated within the broader Soligion project, which studies the interplay between religious and secular welfare initiatives. Drawing from sociological, religious, and social work studies, the research identifies RSIs as a unique yet diverse set of actors that straddle formal and informal care structures, operating with religious inspiration while engaging with public and civil society stakeholders. A key contribution of the research is the development of an inclusive definition of RSIs: initiatives inspired by religion that organise collective action and/or provide services to vulnerable populations. This definition, which moves beyond the limitations of the “faith-based organisation” (FBO) framework, captures both formal organisations and small-scale, grassroots efforts. Based on this, the dissertation develops a typological framework to distinguish RSIs along variables such as religious affiliation, organisational structure, formalisation level, and relationship with the welfare state. The study also investigates how RSIs interact with local government and the tensions that may arise from these relationships. Institutional logics theory is used to analyse the push-and-pull dynamics between secular governance (more focused on efficiency and neutrality) and religiously inspired missions (more centred on care, moral responsibility, and spirituality). RSIs often walk a tightrope between preserving their identity and adapting to bureaucratic demands in order to access funding or collaborate with official structures. Empirical findings are drawn from two urban case studies - Leuven and Antwerp - through interviews, document analysis, and field observations. The research maps a wide variety of RSIs, from large-scale welfare organisations rooted in Catholic traditions to small, informal initiatives within mosques or Pentecostal churches. It highlights how RSIs address gaps in the welfare system, offer holistic support grounded in faith, and negotiate complex relationships with government agencies. This dissertation contributes to the academic understanding of religion-based social support in post-secular contexts, challenging secularisation theses that have marginalised religious actors in social sciences. It also provides insights for social workers, policymakers, and civil society actors to engage more effectively with RSIs, recognising them as essential yet diverse contributors to social cohesion and care. By offering conceptual clarity, empirical mapping, and critical reflections, this study strengthens the foundations for future research and dialogue on the role of religion in contemporary welfare systems.

This chapter begins to uncover the motivations behind supplier-induced demand, locating them at the intersection of structure and agency, stemming from the shift in institutional logics in professional services. Institutional logics delineate the practices, norms, and cognitive perspectives ingrained within our work environments, shaping our perceptions of the work itself. Since the 1980s, professional services have undergone a profound transformation from an advisory institutional logic to a commercial one. These changes have permeated virtually every aspect of professional services, giving rise to sophisticated managerial structures and previously counter normative practices, such as external ownership, marketing one’s services, linking partnership status to partners’ ongoing productivity, recruiting rainmakers from rival firms, and embracing market-oriented principles in pursuit of growth and profitability. This shift in institutional logics has laid a powerful foundation for how professionals began to see their roles and work.

In the current debate on HRM and organisational performance (Mahoney and Pandian, 1992; Storey, 1992; Paauwe, 1994; Wright et al, 1994; Flood et al, 1995; Becker and Gerhardt, 1996; Boxall, 1996; Mueller, 1996; Beatty and Schneider, 1997; Coff, 1997; Guest, 1997; Paauwe and Richardson, 1997; Boxall and Steeneveld, 1999) HR theorists, who refer to the `resource-based view of the ®rm’ (Penrose, 1959; Wernerfelt, 1984; Barney, 1991), argue that HR is a major determinant of a ®rm’s competitive advantage. This argument is relevant particularly in the case of professional service organisations, such as auditing and law ®rms and management consulting organisations (Maister, 1993; Grant, 1997; Nachum, 1998). A ®rm’s ability to generate rents depends largely on its employees competencies (knowledge, skills and attitudes) in tracing work-related problems, diagnosing backgrounds and designing, implementing and evaluating successful solutions. In view of the currently increasing scarcity in labour markets for professionals and the rapidly changing and expanding product markets, HR policy nowadays is even more important to a professional service organisation’s success. Adequate management of HR is a challenging task since knowledge, skills and attitudes are vital but elusive resources. Since competencies are based on former experience and innovative creativeness, they are valuable resources in dealing with familiar and unfamiliar work-related problems. At the same time, knowledge, skills and attitudes are hard to control, since they are inextricably bound to their owners and difficult to identify, measure, protect and destroy (Sadler and Milmer, 1993). Hence, sophisticated HR practices, which successfully cope with the challenges of HR, are important for professional service organisations in order to create and sustain competitive advantage (Coff, 1997). A first step in understanding HRM’s role in professional service organisations is to analyse HR strategies in view of the organisation’ s output market strategy. Recent literature on strategic management in the professional service industry (Maister, 1993) points out that distinct strategic options can effectively enhance organisational performance. Some professional service organisations successfully focus on offering tailor-made solutions for extraordinary organisational problems (expertise orientation), while other organisations stress the effectiveness of more standardised procedures and methods for dealing with a client’ s organisational problems (ef®ciency orientation). The purpose of this article is to chart the relationship between HR and strategic performance options ± or what Boxall and Steeneveld (1999) call, `®rm’s competitive strategy’ ± in professional service organisations by presenting, in an `ideal typical way’ (Weber, 1968; Burger, 1976), two different HR strategies which enhance organisational performance effectively in either expertise or ef®ciency-oriented output market strategies. Analysis is based on an exploration of HR strategies and practices which are currently used in actual professional service organisations in the management consulting industry.

PurposeThis study objective is twofold. This study aims to present an institutional analysis of the implications of job localization programs in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, such as Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Further, it highlights the impacts of these programs on the accounting profession.Design/methodology/approachThis study is based primarily on the desktop research method, where data is collected from the review of previous studies, published data on Internet Websites and reports released by International organizations such as the United Nations. In addition, the study benefitted from conducting six interviews with government officials from GCC countries. Theoretically, this study draws upon insights from the institutional logics theory to discern higher-order institutions deriving job localization decisions in the GCC region.FindingsThis paper explained how job localization policies in the GCC region are informed by three central logics: economic, socio-political and professional. Despite contributing to achieving some socio-political goals for policymakers, these policies could have serious consequences for the practice of the professions and, hence, the local business environment. Besides, this paper highlighted the serious localization policies' impacts on the accounting profession, especially the quality of the workforce (accountants) and their job readiness.Practical implicationsThis study highlights the various implications of job localization policies for locals, foreigners, public and private sector entities and governments. Besides, it has recommended some actions to mitigate the negative influences of such policies on the surrounding society.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the literature by following an interpretative approach in explaining the localization of the accounting profession from an institutional perspective by bringing new evidence from GCC emerging markets.