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Postface: Exploring the Material in Institutional Theory

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Materiality in Institutions

Part of the book series: Technology, Work and Globalization ((TWG))

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between materiality and institutional theory in two parts. The first part examines the chapters of the current volume and how these chapters enlighten our understanding of the relationships between materiality and institutional logics, institutional work and legitimation. I focus on empirical chapters because the relationships among materiality and aspects of institutional theory are clearer and more elaborated. The second part explores the material basis of institutions and offers a few thoughts on the gaps in and directions for future research in materiality and institutional theory.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I am grateful to the editors of the volume, François-Xavier de Vaujany, Anouck Adrot, Eva Boxenbaum and Bernard Leca, for their amazing work and inspired ideas that offer insight into materiality and provocations and new directions to explore in institutional theory. A part of this chapter is drawn from the keynote speech that I delivered to OAP at the 2016 Lisbon conference and the chapter that I was developing at that time with colleagues—Renate Meyer, Dennis Janczary and Markus Hollerher. I focused on materiality whereas they focused on the role of visuality in institutional theory. The chapter, “The material and visual basis for institutions” has been published in Greenwood et al. (2017) Sage Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism.

  2. 2.

    Illustrations of the transferability of materiality and its impacts on information exchanges can be found in Chaps. 6 and 8. In Chap. 6, Adrot and Bia-Figueiredo examine the influence of institutional change on information transmission, partly fostered by the implementation and adoption of a standard collaborative digital platform. In Chap. 8, Santos explains how entrepreneurs in the game industry align their practices to standards within a specific field frame.

  3. 3.

    Chapter 11, by Norholm and Kirkegaard, provides a nice description of a possible assemblage between discourse, bodies and ideas through the investigation of the representation of the killing body’s plasticity in the documentary entitled Armadillo.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Edinburgh Business School, Edinburgh, UK

    Candace Jones

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  1. Candace Jones
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Correspondence to Candace Jones .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Université Paris-Dauphine PSL, Paris, France

    François-Xavier de Vaujany  & Anouck Adrot  & 

  2. Department of Organization Copenhagen Business School, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Eva Boxenbaum

  3. Centre de gestion scientifique (CGS) MINES ParisTech - PSL University i3 UMR CNRS, Paris, France

    Eva Boxenbaum

  4. ESSEC Business School, Cergy-Pontoise, France

    Bernard Leca

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Jones, C. (2019). Postface: Exploring the Material in Institutional Theory. In: de Vaujany, FX., Adrot, A., Boxenbaum, E., Leca, B. (eds) Materiality in Institutions. Technology, Work and Globalization. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97472-9_14

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