Getting Institutional Work to Work - Harvard Business School

Getting Institutional Work to Work:
Generating Actionable Insights from a Practice-Approach to Institutional Ambidexterity
Prof Paula Jarzabkowski
pa49@cornell.edu
Cass Business School, City University, London
Cornell University, Science & Technology Studies
306 Rockefeller Hall
Ithaca, USA
Dr Michael Smets
m.smets@aston.ac.uk
Aston Business School
Aston Triangle, B4 7ET Birmingham
United Kingdom
Dr Rebecca Bednarek
r.bednarek@aston.ac.uk
Aston Business School
Aston Triangle, B4 7ET Birmingham
United Kingdom
Adapted from: Jarzabkowski, P., Smets, M., Bednarek, R., Burke, G., & Spee, P. (forthcoming)
Institutional Ambidexterity: Leveraging Institutional Complexity in Practice, pp. 349–373 in:
Lounsbury, M. & Boxenbaum, E. (eds.) Institutional Logics in Action, Part B, Research in the
Sociology of Organizations; Vol 39b; Emerald Publishing

Abstract
This paper develops a practice approach to institutional ambidexterity. In doing so it first
explores the ‘promise’ of institutional ambidexterity as a concept to address shortcomings
within the institutional theory treatment of complexity. However, we argue that this is an
empty promise because ambidexterity remains an organisational level construct that neither
connects to institutional level, or to the practical actions and interactions within which
individuals enact institutions. We therefore suggest a practice approach that we develop
into a conceptual framework for fulfilling the promise of institutional ambidexterity. The
second part of the paper outlines what a practice approach is and the variation in practicebased
insights into institutional ambidexterity that we might expect in contexts of novel or
routine institutional complexity. Finally, the paper concludes with a research agenda that
highlights the potential of practice to extend institutional theory through new research
approaches to well-established institutional theory questions, interests and establishedunderstandings.
Introduction
Paradoxically, the practice-based approach to institutions (e.g., Battilana and D'Aunno, 2009;
Jarzabkowski, Matthiesen and Van de Ven, 2009; Lounsbury and Crumley, 2007; Smets, Morris
and Greenwood, 2012) that originally emerged as an antidote to excessively managerial notions of
‘institutional entrepreneurship’ (for reviews, see Battilana, Leca and Boxenbaum, 2009; Garud,
Hardy and Maguire, 2007; Hardy and Maguire, 2008) is particularly well-positioned for generating
actionable insights into the relationship of organizational and institutional life.
In directing attention to ‘how people engage in the doing of “real work”’ (Cook and Brown,
1999: 387), as well as to its institutional ramifications, practice-based approaches to institutions
get institutional work to work. This is particularly relevant in institiutionally complex settings, in
which coexisting and potentially conflicting logics are ‘part of the ordinary, everyday nature of
work, rather than exceptional phenomena’ (Jarzabkowski et al., 2009: 289). In these increasingly
prevalent settings, ranging from hospitals (e.g. Heimer, 1999; Reay and Hinings, 2009) to
professional partnerships (e.g. Cooper, Hinings, Greenwood and Brown, 1996; Greenwood and
Suddaby, 2006; Grey, 1998, 2003), to multinational corporations (e.g. Kostova and Zaheer, 1999),
a practice-based approach to institutions is uniquely placed to generate impactful knowledge of
direct managerial relevance.
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Institutional ambidexterity (Greenwood, Raynard, Kodeih, Micellota and Lounsbury, 2011) is
institutionalists’ latest attempt to come to terms with situations of institutional ‘complexity’ or
‘pluralism’, in which incompatible expectations and prescriptions, or ‘logics’, collide (Goodrick
and Reay, 2011; Kraatz and Block, 2008; Pache and Santos, 2010; Thornton, Ocasio and
Lounsbury, 2012). Drawing on existing literature in the strategy field (Gibson and Birkinshaw,
2004; Gupta, Smith and Shalley, 2006; March, 1991; Tushman and O’Reilly, 1996), institutional
ambidexterity looks to the potential benefits of being able to operate across coexisting,
contradictory logics. This perspective marks a significant departure from previous approaches
that saw institutional complexity as problematic and focused on resolving conflict by keeping
apart people, practices or audiences that followed contradictory logics (e.g., Greenwood and
Suddaby, 2006; Seo and Creed, 2002; Smets et al., 2012) This problem-based focus led
institutionalists to overlook the potential benefits for organisations in operating across different
logics. Indeed, from healthcare to professional services to academia, there are numerous
examples of organizations in which seemingly incompatible logics not only coexist, but also
fruitfully complement each other. Therefore, we need to better understand how organizations
can capitalize on interdependencies between logics, and not just remedy problems arising from
their tensions.
The concept of institutional ambidexterity is an important step towards addressing this
shortcoming in the institutional literature; albeit, one that still falls short of resolving it. The
notion of ambidexterity differs from existing approaches because it acknowledges that working to
different prescriptions, while difficult, has the potential to benefit organizations. From this
perspective, institutional complexity is not a problem to be resolved, but a naturally occuring
condition to be managed, and harnessed (Kraatz and Block, 2008). Indeed, if we see exploration
and exploration (March, 1991) as two distinct and contradictory logics of learning, then
ambidexterity has, implicitly, always been looking at logics-in-action and is a useful frame for
looking at institutional complexity (Greenwood et al., 2011). Transposing organizational
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ambidexterity insights into the institutional literature thus appears promising at first sight. Closer
scrutiny, however, exposes this as an empty promise because, to date, ambidexterity scholars
struggle to suggest practical solutions to the puzzle of integrating contradictory prescriptions. For
example, relying on senior management teams to integrate separate efforts lower down the
corporate hierarchy may work for exploration and exploitation (e.g., Benner and Tushman, 2003;
Jansen, Tempelaar, van den Bosch and Volberda, 2009; O'Reilly and Tushman, 2004; Siggelkow
and Levinthal, 2003), but is a less useful insight for other logics that need to be balanced on a
continuous basis by practitioners at work. Similarly, those authors suggesting that ambidexterity
hinges on organizational culture, fail to specify what people in those organizations do to create
such cultures, or to perform their everyday work under their influence (Gibson & Birkinshaw,
2004). These problems arise because ambidexterity scholars have treated complexity as an
organizational phenomenon, without pursuing its practical implications at the individual level or
its origins at the institutional level. Hence, in order to fulfil the promise of the institutional
ambidexterity concept, we need an approach that leverages institutional complexity in practice.
Developing this practice approach to institutional ambidexterity is the focus of this paper,
which unfolds as follows: First, we review existing approaches to institutional complexity. Then,
we visit the ambidexterity literature to gauge the promise it holds for addressing the puzzle of
institutional complexity. Third, we introduce practice theory as a perspective that fruitfully
connects individual, organizational and institutional levels of analysis (e.g., Barley, 2008;
Bourdieu, 1990; Lounsbury and Crumley, 2007; Smets et al., 2012; Whittington, 2006), building a
conceptual model to illustrate our argument. Finally, drawing on the relatively few examples from
the institutional theory literature, we outline the types of insights that a practice perspective on
institutional ambidexterity can generate and indicate promising avenues for future research.
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Institutional Complexity: The Story So Far
Since Friedland and Alford’s (1991) seminal work, institutional complexity, which is the
encounter of ‘incompatible prescriptions from multiple institutional logics’ (Greenwood et al.,
2011: 317), has captured institutionalists’ interest. Such complexity arises from an overlap of
institutional orders with incompatible prescriptions (Thornton et al., 2012); for example, where
organizations operate across institutional spheres with contradictory prescriptions (e.g.,
Greenwood and Suddaby, 2006; Smets et al., 2012) or face different constituents with divergent
demands (e.g., D'Aunno, Sutton and Price, 1991; Greenwood, Magàn Diaz, Li and Céspedes
Lorente, 2010; Heimer, 1999). Over time and based on the intellectual priorities in the broader
field of institutional theory, this interest has taken three different guises that we outline below.
Institutional Complexity as Occasion for Change
Institutional logics are the building blocks of institutional complexity and initially rose to
prominence as a means of theorizing about the heterogeneity in institutional environments
(Battilana and Dorado, 2010; Seo and Creed, 2002; Thornton and Ocasio, 2008; Thornton et al.,
2012). Complexity allowed institutionalists to counter critiques of being overly focused on
homogeneity and stasis (Hirsch and Lounsbury, 1997) and to theorize institutional change arising
endogenously, rather than from exogenous regulatory, social, or technological shocks (Edelman,
1992; Garud, Jain and Kumaraswamy, 2002; Rao, Monin and Durand, 2003). Seo and Creed
(2002) argue that institutional contradictions can function as an endogenous trigger of change,
because they make actors aware of alternatives to their institutionalized, taken-for-granted ways
and motivate them to pursue more favourable alternatives (e.g., Djelic and Quack, 2003;
Greenwood and Suddaby, 2006; Seo and Creed, 2002; Smets et al., 2012; Thornton, Jones and
Kury, 2005). Given the predominant preoccupation with explaining institutional change, such
research depicted complexity as transitory, en route to a state of relative stability in which one logic
dominates over another (Marquis and Lounsbury, 2007; Reay and Hinings, 2005; Thornton,
2002; Townley, 2002).
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Institutional Complexity as Contested Coexistence
More recently, however, institutional theorists have come to recognize that institutional
complexity may not be transitory, but permanent (Greenwood et al., 2011; Zilber, 2011);
especially for those organizations which, by their very nature, are ‘an incarnation or embodiment
of multiple logics’ (Kraatz and Block, 2008: 244). In these organizations, contradictory
prescriptions from different legitimating audiences systematically collide in everyday operations
and institutional complexity must be managed continuously. Therefore, studies of such
organizations made efforts to leave the field level and ‘get inside’ organizations to understand
organizational responses to institutional complexity (e.g., Battilana and Dorado, 2010; Pache and
Santos, 2010). However, they retained a focus on the incompatibilities and tensions that
characterize the overlap of competing logics (Greenwood et al., 2011), as reflected in the imagery
of ‘turmoil’ (Hallett, 2010: 52); ‘threat’ (Jarzabkowski et al., 2009: 306) and ‘uneasy truce’ (Reay
and Hinings, 2005: 364). As a result, suggested organizational responses, building on Oliver’s
(1991) seminal work, have been largely defensive. These may involve resistance to institutional
pressures (Townley, 1997), use of organizational status to avoid or defy problematic stakeholders
(e.g., Greenwood and Suddaby, 2006; Smets et al., 2012), or compartmentalization of compliance
with different sets of expectations into different organizational or geographic units (e.g., Binder,
2007; Dunn and Jones, 2010; Jarzabkowski et al., 2009; Lounsbury, 2007). Common to the
majority of these responses is their focus on simplifying the situation and reducing the tensions
of complexity by keeping apart competing logics and the practices and people that enact them.
Advocating an approach of not letting the right hand know what the left hand was doing, such
studies did not fully consider that organisations that are ‘dextrous with both hands’ might not
only avoid tensions, but also reap distinctive benefits of their situation.
Institutional Ambidexterity as Embrace of Complexity
Most recently, institutional scholars have revisited relationships between logics in a more
nuanced fashion, discovering potential for more fruitful relationships between coexisting logics
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(e.g., Almandoz, forthcoming; Battilana and Dorado, 2010; Greenwood et al., 2011; Kraatz and
Block, 2008; Smets and Jarzabkowski, forthcoming). Ironically, benefits of awareness and
reflexivity were already highlighted by Seo and Creed (2002); indeed, Friedland and Alford
pointed out that coexisting logics ‘are interdependent and yet also contradictory’ (1991: 250;
emphasis added; see also Scott, 1991). This makes intuitive sense, as there are benefits in
scientific and well-managed patient-care (Dunn and Jones, 2010; Kitchener, 2002), more clientoriented
or multi-disciplinary professional services (Greenwood and Suddaby, 2006; Suddaby and
Greenwood, 2005; Thornton et al., 2005), or positive feedback loops between commercialized
research outputs and ideas or funding for future research (D'Este and Perkmann, 2011;
Perkmann and Walsh, 2009). Institutional scholars, given their predominant focus on
incompatibility and tension, have largely neglected such interdependencies. Yet, interdependence
indicates that truly ambidextrous approaches to complexity, in which the left hand not only
knows what the right hand does, but can skilfully complement its actions, are much more
apposite to address the conundrum of institutional complexity.
Greenwood and colleagues (2011) suggest borrowing from the ambidexterity literature to
provide new insights into the integration of competing logics. The basic premise of ambidexterity
is the ability to simultaneously perform contradictory processes when both are critical to
organizational success (March, 1991; Tushman and O’Reilly, 1996). This change in perspective is
helpful for institutionalists insofar as it moves from attempting to resolve complexity to
balancing its components in pursuit of distinctive outputs and identities (Goodrick and Reay,
2011; Kraatz and Block, 2008; Reay and Hinings, 2009). Based on Simsek’s (2009) distinction of
‘structural’ and ‘blended’ hybrids, two different approaches to ambidexterity have been proposed
in institutional theory; neither of which, however, seems to be currently delivering on the
promise of embracing institutional complexity. Structural differentiation arises from current work
on compartmentalization that assigns compliance with different expectations to different
organizational units. Where and how subsequent integration occurs, however, remains unclear to
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date. Blended hybrids sidestep this problem by allowing different logics to pervade the
organization and relying on individuals to strike an appropriate balance (Battilana and Dorado,
2010; D'Aunno et al., 1991; Smets et al., 2012). So far, this appears to be the ‘gold standard’ of
institutional ambidexterity. However, several problems remain. For example, suggestions for
facilitating logic blending are currently limited to recommendations of using human resource
policies to create an open and receptive context (Battilana and Dorado, 2010; Smets et al., 2012).
How this is to be done and what individuals inhabiting these contexts do to enact different logics,
however, remains obscure. Furthermore, it is questionable that an indistinguishable blend of
competing logics and the practices that enact them would always be desirable. As Battilana and
Dorado (2010) foreshadow, blended hybridization may produce ‘slippage’ towards either logic.
From a theoretical perspective, slippage may herald institutional change, rather than balanced
complexity with distinct but coexistent logics. Empirically, failure to discriminate between, and
sustain, competing logics may herald the neglect of critical standards, as experienced in the case
of Enron and other corporate scandals in which commercial goals superseded professional
standards (Gabbioneta, Greenwood, Mazzola and Minoja, forthcoming; Grey, 2003). Alternatives
that can integrate practices governed by competing logics on an ongoing, practical basis in order
to sustain them as interdependent yet separate have thus rarely been explored in the (institutional)
ambidexterity literature. We consider this neglect both theoretically and empirically problematic.
We now briefly visit the foundations of ambidexterity in the strategy literature, before developing
a practice-theoretical variant that we consider more suitable for addressing remaining blind spots
in the study of institutional complexity and the attendant concept of institutional ambidexterity.
Ambidexterity in the Strategy Literature: A False Promise
The ambidexterity literature suggests that successful firms are ambidextrous; ‘aligned and
efficient with today’s business demands [exploitation] while simultaneously adaptive to changes in
the environment [exploration]’ (March, 1991; Raisch and Birkinshaw, 2008: 685). As discussed
above, Greenwood et al. (2011) link this concept to institutional theory through labelling
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‘exploitation’ and ‘exploration’ as different logics of learning. Other scholars argue that, as
ambidexterity can been used to signify an organisation’s ability to do two different (apparently
conflicting) things at the same time more generally, it is applicable to logics other than
exploitation and exploration (Gibson and Birkinshaw, 2004). Ambidexterity, the ability to excel at
two contradictory things simultaneously, is posited as both possible and desirable for
organizations. It is thus portrayed as an organizational resource that links to organizational
performance, which is the central theoretical proposition and empirically explored relationship in
the ambidexterity literature (Gibson and Birkinshaw, 2004; He and Wong, 2004; Simsek, 2009;
Tushman and O’Reilly, 1996). Achieving ambidexterity is not, however, assumed to be easy, as
the simultaneous fulfilment of competing demands is filled with potential tensions and trade-offs
(Andriopoulos and Lewis, 2009; Raisch and Birkinshaw, 2008; Smith and Tushman, 2005). The
literature has explored three main ways of achieving organizational ambidexterity: structure,
organizational context (culture) and leadership (Raisch and Birkinshaw, 2008; Simsek, 2009).
Initially, structural solutions proposed that distinct organizational units should pursue either
exploration or exploitation (Benner and Tushman, 2003; Burgelman, 2002; Gupta et al., 2006;
O'Reilly and Tushman, 2004; Smith and Tushman, 2005; Tushman and O’Reilly, 1996). Then,
contextual ambidexterity focused on an organization’s culture, suggesting that if management
created a suitable context, for example by engendering trust, ambidexterity would be apparent at all
levels of the organizations (Birkinshaw and Gibson, 2004). Finally, given that both these bodies of
research focus on the upper echelons of management that are either the strategic integrating apex
(Smith & Tushman, 2005); or responsible for creating a supportive business-unit context
(Birkinshaw & Gibson, 2004), a large body of work has focused on leadership and leaders’
characteristics that enable organizational ambidexterity (Carmeli and Halevi, 2009; Jansen et al.,
2009; Lubatkin, Simsek, Yan and Veiga, 2006; Siggelkow and Levinthal, 2003; Smith, Binns and
Tushman, 2010; Smith and Tushman, 2005)
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In considering the ambidexterity literature, issues emerge with its capacity to provide a
theoretical foundation for managing institutional complexity and the desire to embrace
interdependence and integration between divergent logics. First, there is a surprising lack of
integration in the ambidexterity literature (Simsek, 2009). Indeed, ‘organizational ambidexterity’
was initially treated as ‘virtually synonymous with structurally differentiated hybrids’ (Greenwood
et al., 2011: 355) and any integration that does occur is usually located at the apex of an
organization rather than something that is imbued at all organizational levels (Smith & Tushman,
2005).
Second, ambidexterity remains an explicitly organizational construct, which partly explains the
lack of attention to the practical doing of ambidexterity by managers. The literature lacks
integrative models that span multiple levels of analysis, such as the individual and institutional
levels (Gupta et al., 2006; Raisch, Birkinshaw, Probst and Tushman, 2009; Simsek, 2009). In
particular, contextual and structural ambidexterities exclude a micro focus on how individuals
perform ambidexterity or macro perspectives on the institutional ramifications of ambidexterity
(Simsek, 2009). While the lineage of the term ‘ambidextrous’ is explicitly individual – the capacity
of an individual to do two things at once – as a metaphor in organization studies, ambidexterity
has not focused on the individual per se or how actors do ambidexterity (Andriopoulos and Lewis,
2009; Gupta et al., 2006). This is true even when authors argue that ambidexterity resides at the
individual level, such as Gibson and Birkinshaw (2005), who propose that individuals should use
their own judgement to achieve ambidexterity, but focus on the characteristics of their context
rather than on how the individuals might do that. Tellingly, in painting a multi-level picture of
ambidexterity, Bledow et al. (2009) include only one explicit ambidexterity citation in their
summary of the individual level (Mom, Van Den Bosch and Volberda, 2007), drawing the rest of
their literature from other research domains.
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Bledow et al.’s (2009) model is also explicitly intra-organizational, with no discussion of the
broader organizational environment, leading to our second point that the ambidexterity literature
is almost exclusively internally focused on organizational capabilities. It is not concerned with
legitimacy and adherence to externally imposed rules of action (Greenwood et al., 2011). When
the inter-organizational environment is considered, it is a secondary focus behind intraorganizational
performance and resources, such as how alliances may be a source of intraorganizational
ambidexterity (Rothaermel and Deeds, 2006), or how particular characteristics of
an organizations’ immediate, local environment may impact the ambidexterity-performance link
(Jansen, van de Bosch and Volberda, 2005; Jansen, van de Bosch and Volberda, 2006; Levinthal
and March, 1993). Consequently, ambidexterity does not provide institutional theorists with the
means to link the ambidextrous doing of institutional complexity at the individual level, with the
organizational level and the broader institutional field. In its current conceptual state, it is a false
promise for studying the problems and benefits of institutional complexity.
Fulfilling the Promise: Institutional Ambidexterity in Practice
In this section we draw together the concept of institutional ambidexterity, the shortcomings
that currently prevent it from fulfilling its promise, and our suggestion of practice theory as a way
to address those shortcomings in a conceptual model of our argument. Ambidexterity presents a
potential solution to how organisations can reap the benefits of interdependent logics, by
suggesting that they may embrace two potentially contradictory courses of action simultaneously.
However, as shown in Figure 1, it is primarily an organisational level construct that does not
adequately address the issues of logics in action. That is, ambidexterity neither examines the
institutional logics within which potential contradictions are embedded, nor the actions that
people take in coping with coexistence in more or less complementary ways. Hence, we need an
underpinning theoretical approach that can flesh out institutional ambidexterity as a concept that
embraces the potential benefits of institutional complexity and also examines how actors work
within such complexity to perform ambidextrous associations between logics.
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INSERT FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE
Practice theories span multiple levels from institutional to individual within which institutional
complexity is socially accomplished. From a practice perspective, all action is situated within,
produces and re-produces the dynamics of its wider social context. Thus, by looking at the
actions of individuals at the nexus of different institutional logics, such as health care,
educational, arts and regulated organizations, we can see how actions that are situated within
multiple logics construct ambidexterity. Institutions themselves cannot be ambidextrous; rather,
people do institutional ambidexterity in their everyday actions and interactions as they work within
and enact multiple logics.
Practice theory (e.g. Jarzabkowski, 2005; Jarzabkowski, Balogun and Seidl, 2007; Schatzki,
2001) directs attention to, ‘how people engage in the doing of “real work”’ (Cook and Brown,
1999: 387) but also the ‘shared practical understanding’ which gives it meaning and makes it
robust (Schatzki, 2001: 2). The focus is on how actors interact with, construct and draw upon the
social and physical features of their context in the everyday activities that constitute practice.
Practice theorists have thus sought to go beyond the dualism of institutions and action that still
permeates much institutional theory (Barley, 2008; Hallett, 2010), by demonstrating that
institutions are constructed by and, in turn, construct action (e.g. Bourdieu, 1990; Giddens, 1984;
Sztompka, 1991; Turner, 1994). For these theorists, the collective practice that constitutes
institutional order exists only through the way that it is enacted in the mundane, practical actions
of actors, as depicted by the double-headed ‘practice’ arrow in Figure 1. Practice theory thus
takes actions, interactions and negotiations between multiple individuals as the core unit of
analysis (Jarzabkowski et al, 2007). In these actions and interactions, actors instantiate, reproduce
and modify the shared or collective practice (Schatzki, 2002)that is the focus of institutional
theory (Jarzabkowski, 2004; Whittington, 2006). A practice lens can thus provide insight into how
actors perform institutional ambidexterity within their work; enacting competing understandings
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about ‘how to go on’ (Chia and Holt, 2009; Giddens, 1984) and coping with the resultant
tensions in practical ways that perform the ambidexterity of working within and between multiple
logics (Denis et al, 2007).
Recent developments in institutional theory show sensitivity to the practice approach. For
example, a recent book exhorts institutional theorists to examine logics in action, devoting an
entire paper to practices as the material enactments of institutional logics (Thornton et al., 2012),
while other studies explicitly propose a practice approach as a means of understanding how
actors cope with and respond to institutional complexity (e.g., Jarzabkowski et al., 2009; Smets et
al., 2012). In contrast to existing accounts that locate institutional complexity in field-level
‘contradictions’ (Seo and Creed, 2002), such studies propose that institutional complexity is
experienced as ‘part of the ordinary, everyday nature of work, rather than exceptional
phenomena’ (Jarzabkowski et al., 2009: 289). Practice theoretical approaches thus address the gap
in Figure 1, by showing how we may understand institutional ambidexterity at the collective
practice level through a focus on people’s practical coping with institutional complexity. The
majority of such studies furnish insights into practical actions in situations of novel institutional
complexity, such as changes in the juxtaposition of logics within an organisation. Examples
include Jarzabkowski et al’s (2009) study of a shift in the association between market and
regulatory logics in a telecoms company, Smets et al’s (2012) study of German and English
professional logics colliding in a law-firm merger, or Zilber’s (2002) study of the way that
practices become imbued with different meanings during a transition from feminist to clinical
institutional logics. However, the practice theory focus on everyday, practical coping indicates
that there may also be significant value in moving beyond novelty to also examine cases of longstanding
or routine institutional complexity.
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Individual level: Action and interaction in doing ambidexterity
We now examine some of the main findings from such practice-oriented studies of
institutional complexity, in order to develop the final section of our conceptual framework about
the practical understandings through which actors perform institutional ambidexterity. ‘Practical
understanding’ is a practice term that refers to the actions – the know-how and embodied
repertoires – that compose a practice (Schatzki, 2002: 77-78). While practical understandings are
firmly grounded in actors and their actions, they encompass the collective practice within which
people tacitly understand or have a ‘feel for’ how to perform the social order (see also Bourdieu,
1990; Giddens, 1984). They thus provide a useful unit of analysis for practice-based approaches
to institutional theory. While not intended to be exhaustive, this section illustrates some insights
that a focus on the practical, mundane doing of institutional ambidexterity in action can provide.
First, is an expanded practice repertoire whereby individuals incorporate both traditional local
practices, for example, English- and German logics of legal practice, and new hybridized
practices in their work (Smets and Jarzabkowski, forthcoming). As these authors showed,
German lawyers could undertake cross-border financing for international clients according to
international standards, whilst also retaining those practices specific to their domestic markets, to
be activated when required in local transactions. The finding of an expanded practice repertoire
gives empirical credence to theories about the potential benefits of institutional complexity
(Greenwood et al., 2011) beyond suggestions that they expand individuals’ cultural tool kit
(Swidler, 1986). Specifically, they show that the expanded portfolio need not be cultural, but may
also be practical. We are thus motivated to think not only of ‘strategies to respond’ to complexity,
but also of the generative capacity of complexity (Kraatz and Block, 2008) to expand the practical
toolkit of actors.
A second, related form of practical understanding is ‘situated improvising.’ Smets et al. (2012)
show how urgency and high stakes in meeting client expectations encouraged lawyers to
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experiment and respond in a localized fashion to institutional complexity. These actions were
simply actors’ practical efforts to find ways around obstacles to getting the job done in an
institutionally complex environment. Intriguingly, such situated improvising can unfold effects at
the organizational and institutional level. It may broaden practitioners’ zone of competence and
consolidate in an expanded practice repertoire (Smets & Jarzabkowski, forthcoming) or radiate to
the level of the field and, under specific circumstances, re-arrange dominant field-level logics
(Smets et al., 2011).
A third practical understanding is mutual adjustment (Jarzabkowski et al., 2009; Lindblom, 1965),
in which individuals adjust in various ways to the logics governing each other’s actions, without
the need for an overarching coordinating device or purpose. Jarzabkowski et al. (2009: 300)
highlight mutual adjustment in a utilities company facing contradictory market and regulatory
logics. In their study, actors working to different logics recognized their interdependence and
therefore tried “to accommodate the other, advocating tolerance of the other’s position in
relation to their own logic” (ibid, p. 300). They show that pragmatic collaboration and recognition
of interdependence between activities governed by divergent logics can guide practice as
individuals adjust, in various ways and to varying degrees, in relation to one another. Their
practice study thus complements and extends Reay and Hinings’ (2009) inter-organizational level
findings about how truces between logics are constructed.
A fourth practical understanding is switching. While the idea of switching resonates with ideas
of compartmentalization (Kraatz and Block, 2008; Meyer and Rowan, 1977), in so much as
different logics are separated into different divisions and actors. However, it is distinct insofar as
it allows a single actor to shift between logics by enacting them at different times or in different
spaces, so switching between compartmentalized logics. This practical understanding draws from
DiMaggio’s (1997: 268) theorization of the capacity of individuals ‘to participate in multiple
[inconsistent] cultural traditions’, and Delmestri’s (2006: 1518) depiction of individuals as
‘possible bearers of multiple institutionalized identities.’ Delmestri shows the capacity of
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managers to switch between different institutionalized modes of practice according to the way
that different logics underpin their roles and identities. For example, managers that were exposed
to greater institutional complexity were able to maintain multiple professional modes of practice
and apply them in different contexts. Zilber (2011) provides another example of how this occurs
in practice, indicating how the same actors used language and situational cues to switch between
logics, and participate in and promulgate different discourses, at an industry conference. Such
‘cues’ of language and meeting format connect to DiMaggio’s (1997) argument that switching is
usually connected to a circumstantial trigger, such as language in Zilber’s case. In sum, this ability
for an individual to switch between multiple logics, and thus participate in their associated
practices, enables them to maintain what might otherwise be considered inconsistent modes of
action.
Individuals in action and interaction
While practice theorists have always focussed on individuals through their actions and
interactions (Jarzabkowski et al, 2007), institutional theory also suggests other, more cognitive
and identity-based approaches to the individual that may also provide insights into institutional
ambidexterity (Creed, Scully and Austin, 2002; Greenwood et al., 2011; Lok, 2010; Rao et al.,
2003). Such approaches suggest that personal identity and experience-base shape how
practitioners cope with institutional complexity, and that organizations can skilfully harness these
personal characteristics. For instance, Delmestri (2006) identified middle managers’ personal self
as a critical intervening variable in their engagement with local and foreign practices in
multinational corporations. Smets et al (2012) found that international law firms preferred more
‘cosmopolitan’ recruits who were multi-lingual, had lived or studied abroad and, as they were less
wedded to a particular way of ‘doing things’, appeared to be more flexible in improvising around
institutional contradictions. Likewise, Battilana and Dorado (2010) show that prior experience
with – and attachment to – a particular logic hampered organizational hybridization in a
microfinance bank. Here, recruits that arrived as a blank sheet, rather than with a fully formed
15

‘commercial’ or ‘social’ professional identity were considered more likely to develop
ambidextrous capabilities to support organizational hybridization. Individual characteristics and
experiences are thus important in the context of institutional ambidexterity. They shape
individuals’ responses to specific logics and the complexities that arise at their interstices, and
thereby help or hinder organizational engagement with coexisting and potentially contradictory
logics.
However, from a practice perspective such identity and experience are only antecedents to
practical understandings and potential ambidextrous capacities. The individuals whose identities
are being considered still have to be seen as individuals-in-interaction. To focus on them as
individuals per se, in terms of their cognitive and person-centred characteristics, without
considering how these characteristics are situated within and shape the wider collective practice
would be reductionist (Schatzki, 2002; Turner, 1994), taking institutionalists back to overly
individualistic, disembedded, or cognitive views of institutions and their complexities. This would
not only constitute a step backwards in the evolution of institutional theory (Delbridge and
Edwards, 2008; Delmestri, 2006; Hirsch and Lounsbury, 1997), but also fail to harness practice
theory’s distinct ability to link individual-level action and interaction to the organizational and
institutional dynamics that are critical for understanding institutional ambidexterity.
Organizational level: Novel and routine complexity
As shown in Figure 1, the opportunity for ambidexterity arises when contradictory logics
come together in an organisational context, generating practices that enact and construct
institutional complexity. However, we still know little about different characteristics or forms of
such ambidexterity, and their connection to different individual practices. Pache and Santos
(2010) thus outline the need for increased understanding of when particular strategies may or
may not be used in response to institutional complexity. Such studies could focus on a number of
triggering elements at the organisational level, such as urgency (Smets et al., 2012), the extent to
which complexity is internally or externally imposed (Pache & Santos, 2010); and the level of
16

scrutiny (Aurini, 2006; Meyer and Rowan, 1977). However, these elements all indicate a focus on
conditions of novel complexity that trigger a change in practical understanding. We argue,
therefore, that there is a particular need for studies of organisational context that embody routine
complexity, and comparisons with contexts of novel complexity.
The majority of the institutional literature has focused on novel complexity, including those few
studies that have focused on individual practice (Jarzabkowski et al., 2009; Smets and
Jarzabkowski, forthcoming; Smets et al., 2012). In general, institutionalists have been alerted to
institutional complexity by relatively recent clashes between commercial and professional logics.
Consequently, their primary focus has been on moments of flux and crisis in which competing
logics collide (e.g., Battilana and Dorado, 2010; Greenwood and Suddaby, 2006; Jarzabkowski et
al., 2009; Reay and Hinings, 2009; Smets et al., 2012). While insightful, this may predispose a
focus on urgency, contestation, crisis, and problematic understandings of complexity (Goodrick
and Reay, 2011; Lawrence, Suddaby and Leca, 2009). Instead, the call for greater attention to the
day-to-day actions of individuals at work (Powell and Colyvas, 2008) can help institutional theory
as a whole resist the ‘search for drama’ (March, 1981: 564). While we urge further practice studies
of the novel we therefore highlight the need for a sustained focus on the routine. In settings that
have been characterized by institutional complexity for a sustained period of time, solutions may
become ‘settled’ into everyday, taken-for-granted practical understandings of ambidexterity,
characterized by an explicit lack of struggle and noise (Smets et al., 2012). As such, institutional
complexities that form a well-rehearsed part of everyday practice may become unremarkable and
mundane (Chia and Holt, 2009). Nonetheless, these routine practical understandings remain
effortful accomplishments (Giddens, 1984) and clashes over the appropriate enactment of
different logics can still occur. However, actors in such contexts may have a different set of
practical understandings through which they both enact ambidexterity and also cope with the
inevitable clashes that occur. To understand institutional ambidexterity as a routinized
phenomenon, we thus need to study how institutional complexity is managed on an ongoing
17

asis in organizations that have practiced and retained multiple, potentially competing logics over
a long period of time. A practice approach is particularly suited for such a research agenda,
because it is attuned to what people do when institutional complexity is settled into routinely
enacted patterns of everyday working practice and, hence, less visible, than when they craft
overtly strategic responses to novel complexity or institutional crisis (Chia & Holt, 2009),
demanding
Power and politics
Institutional theory has long acknowledged the importance of power and politics in
organizational dynamics (DiMaggio, 1988; Jarzabkowski et al., 2009; Kostova and Zaheer, 1999).
Indeed the concept of institutional complexity helped researchers highlight these issues
(Greenwood et al., 2011). Despite the somewhat sanitized picture of routinized practice described
above, we are usefully reminded that all contexts that generate ambidexterity involve power and
politics in determining how and when to work within and between potential contradictions. It is
apparent that the novel furnishes greater visibility of these concepts than the routine (e.g.,
Jarzabkowski et al., 2009). Nonetheless, one role of practice studies could be to surface the
hidden, often forgotten, sources of power and politics at play, highlighting the persistence of
such dynamics even when they are not readily apparent. Concepts such as expanded repertoires
and routinized practices are ‘power-laden’, even if they do not require the same degree of overt
political negotiation as open conflict (Clegg, Courpasson and Phillips, 2006). We thus expect that
studies of ambidexterity might focus on the way that concepts of power and politics play out at
the practical level of individuals in action and interaction and at the organisational level.
Institutional complexity in context: Characteristics of collective practice
A practice approach to institutional complexity has the ability to connect the individual,
organisational and institutional levels of analysis (Lounsbury and Crumley, 2007; Smets et al.,
2012). We further argue that this practice approach can illuminate the nature of institutional
complexity in its specific context. Specifically, we suggest that the characteristics of the collective
18

practice in which logics come together influence how the nature of a particular institutional
complexity is constructed. Smets and Jarzabkowski (forthcoming) show that actors, through their
practice, can construct the same two logics and their associated practices as strange,
contradictory, commensurable and complementary. A focus on practice thus transcends
simplistic ideas that certain logics are compatible or contradictory per se. Rather, we argue that
(in)compatibility is always conditioned by the specific situated practice in which those logics
come together. For example, professional and commercial or managerial logics are likely to be
more compatible in consulting or business service firms (Smets et al., 2012) than in healthcare
(Reay and Hinings, 2009; Ruef and Scott, 1998). Similarly, professional and commercial logics are
easier to hybridize within the freedom of practice inherent in private educational contexts
(Aurini, 2006) than in the more restrictive and regulated practice of public education contexts
(Hallett, 2010). In other examples, medical practitioners may have established practices and
experiences that provide cost-effective social good, so that actors can affiliate with and move
between the multiple logics that govern their organisation. By contrast, a microfinance
organization interested in blending commercial and community logics might need to employ
practitioners with no prior affiliation with either logic (Battilana and Dorado, 2010). Hence,
logics such as ‘community’, ‘commercial’, and ‘professional’ are not absolute in being either
conflicting or complementary. Rather, they are interdependent in particular ways or constellations
according to the particular collective and situated practice in which they are enacted.
Conclusion
This paper has outlined a practice research agenda for studying institutional ambidexterity that
links the individual, organizational and institutional levels within which ambidexterity is enacted.
We have developed Figure 1 as a conceptual model of our argument that is grounded in
institutional theory, the literature on ambidexterity, and the benefits of a practice approach in
fulfilling the promise of institutional ambidexterity. In particular, we suggest that scholars should
focus on individuals in action and interaction, as they develop practical understandings about
19

how to cope with institutional ambidexterity. Furthermore, we highlight the benefits of
comparing and contrasting contexts of novel and routinized organizational ambidexterity; in
particular proposing that routinized ambidexterity provides a fertile avenue for future practice
research. Finally, we propose that the collective practice that constitutes institutional complexity
is particular to its specific context, as logics may be more or less contradictory or interdependent.
Hence, actors will generate varying practices according to their particular contexts, in order to
cope with and construct institutional ambidexterity in ways that go beyond our existing insights
into institutional complexity. We therefore highlight the practice approach as a rich avenue for
future research that can fulfil the promise of institutional ambidexterity as a solution to the
problems, and enabler of the benefits, of institutional complexity.
Future research is unlikely to discover much novel insight if it continues to do ‘more of the
same’. Given the shift in focus that comes with a practice approach to institutional ambidexterity,
commensurate methodological adjustments should be made so that a new research agenda is
accompanied by a new methodological agenda. Recent practice-theoretical insights into
institutional dynamics have already been derived from an increasing focus on micro-dynamics
and the use of qualitative and ethnographic methods (Jarzabkowski et al., 2009; Smets et al.,
2012; Zilber, 2002, 2011). We expect this trend to continue and intensify, making in-depth cases
studies and real time ethnographies the methods of choice for the research agenda laid out here.
As institutional theory is also concerned with embedded and long-standing patterns of social
order, these real-time studies may need to be considered as critical incidents for drilling deep into
institutional phenomena in action, even as they are, ideally, combined with more mainstream,
large-scale institutional methods (Dunn and Jones, 2010; Greenwood et al., 2010; Ruef and Scott,
1998; Thornton, 2002). This combination holds the promise of providing the kind of multi-level
data that is needed to bring a practice approach to institutional ambidexterity into its own by
linking individual, organizational and institutional levels of analysis (e.g., Lounsbury & Crumley,
2007; Smets et al., 2012).
20

Further potential lies in the refinement of qualitative methods to make them more acutely
sensitive to different aspects of practice. Promising avenues include a greater focus on the
minutiae of practical actions and interactions, as advocated by micro ethnographers (Streeck and
Mehus, 2005) or video ethnographers (LeBaron, 2005; LeBaron, 2008; LeBaron and Streeck,
1997). If the practices by which logics are enacted, rather than the logics themselves take the
foreground, then the embodied interactions within which identities are formed and institutional
divides bridged yield pertinent data (LeBaron, Glenn and Thompson, 2009; Streeck, Goodwin
and LeBaron, 2011). Further, the contexts in which practices unfold are not only institutional but
also mundanely material. People do things with ‘things’ in different places and spaces. While the
role of boundary objects in bridging organisational divides has long been recognized (Carlile,
2002) and the affordances of technologies and materials has been recognized in practice studies
(Leonardi, 2011; Orlikowski and Scott, 2008; Orlikowski, 2010), materials and spaces, their
impact on interaction ,and on the instantiation of different logics has so far not been studied
from an institutional perspective. Methodologies that look beyond the allocation of spaces (e.g.,
Kellogg, 2009) to consider their features and impacts on human interaction hold great promise
for advancing a practice approach to institutional ambidexterity.
Finally, the new research agenda not only opens opportunities for new methodologies, but
also holds a new challenge. Studying established complexities and ‘settled’ responses is predicated
on the researcher’s ability to observe the nexus of divergent logics as they come together in
practice. Finding that ‘nexus’ – that point in an organization, or in time – at which the routinized
coming together of contradictory logics can be studied in real time will be a critical
methodological challenge. Especially where organizational responses to institutional complexity
are settled and routinized, no ‘drama’ will signal a complexity of note that may appear worthy of
study. By its routinized nature, it will be less visible and less immediately interesting and yet it is
in precisely such everyday, settled enactment that we may gain the deepest insights into how
actors perform institutional ambidexterity. It is thus vital that scholars generate the in-depth
21

knowledge of an empirical context and the openness and interest to explore whatever ‘goes on’
quietly at the nexus of institutional logics if they are to uncover how institutional ambidexterity is
accomplished in practice, particularly in contexts of routine complexity.
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Figure 1: A practice approach to institutional ambidexterity
Ins tu onal Complexity Ambidexterity Prac ce Theory
A prac ce approach to ins tu onal
ambidexterity
Ins tu onal
Level
Co-exis ng logics
Logic A Logic B
Problem to be
resolved
Gap:
No link
Solu on
Collec ve Prac ce;
Situated actors and
ac ons
Complexity in context:
Characteris cs of collec ve
prac ce
Organiza onal
Level
Ques on: How to
engage compe on
logics construc vely?
Proposed solu on:
Ins tu onal
ambidexterity
(Greenwood et al., 2010)
Complexity as a
resource
(explore and exploit)
(Jarzabkowski,
2004;
Lounsbury &
Crumley, 2007;
Schatzki, 2002;
Whi ngton,
2006)
Ambidexterity as
organiza on context
in which logics come
together
Current focus:
Novel
Complexity
Exis ng prac cal
understandings
Gap:
Rou ne
Complexity
Poten al new insight
in prac cal
understandings
Individual
Level
Gap:
Tenuous link
Solu on
Mundane
‘Doing’ (individuals’
ac ons
and interac ons)
• Selec ve Hybridisa on
• Mutual Adjustment
• Situated switching
• Expanded Prac ce Repertoires
28