Micro-strategies of Contextualization Cross-national Transfer of Socially Responsible Investment

This paper examines how individuals select and mobilize local institutions when they transfer business practices across societies that are construed as dissimilar to one another. We investigate empirically how the American business practice of socially responsible investment (SRI) was transferred to France and Quebec. Our analysis identifies five micro-strategies that were employed to contextualize SRI, namely filtering, rerouting, stowing, defusing, and coupling. This repertoire of micro-strategies extends previous research on contextualization, translation, and institutional transfers and links them to one another. They may also help explain why some transfers succeed while others fail.Contextualization; transfer; translation; institutional theory; socially responsible investment

Policy making as bricolage: the role of platforms in institutional innovation

International audienceThe making of environmental policies is a multi-stakeholders process where actors often hold antagonistic interests. The paper explores how institutional compromises are reached by the mechanism of collective bricolage. Recent studies are developing a view on institutional innovation as bricolage, but the conditions under which bricolage occurs and succeeds in relation to institutional innovation are still unknown. Drawing on the notion of platform developed in the context of economics performativity, we study their role in bricolage mechanisms. We hold an empirical case study of the GETS platform that was instrumental in developing the European carbon market as a corner-stone of European climate policy. Based on the GETS case study, we find three modalities in which platforms stimulate institutional bricolage: catalyzing combinations, managing learning, fostering compromise. These findings draw on, and extend, the notion of platforms developed in the context of economics performativity, contributing to a better understanding of processes of bricolage and, more widely, of institutional innovation. The managerial implication of this study is to identify the conditions under which compromises become manageable in processes of policy making.

How individuals cope with institutional complexity in organizations: a case study in the energy transition

International audienceThe present article examines how employees cope with an organizational setting that is institutionally complex. The empirical setting is a French energy corporation that simultaneously pursues a logic of science and a logic of market through multiple research partnerships with public and private actors engaged in the energy transition. We draw on the literature on institutional logics and hybrid organizations to examine how employees of this French energy corporation deal with this institutionally complex environment. Our findings point to three strategies that individuals use to cope with institutional complexity in their organizational setting: aggregating, selective coupling and compartmentalizing. Each individual uses only one strategy. The findings further suggest three psychological factors that seem to explain which of these strategies a given individual adopts for coping with institutional complexity: tolerance for ambiguity, preference for holism, and preference for reductionism. We integrate these findings into a two-dimensional model. These findings contribute to illuminating how individuals cope with institutional complexity in their organizational setting, an insight that can help shed light on why organizations respond somewhat differently to the same institutionally complex field

I love my work but how do I make sense of it? The role of emotions in hybrid organizations

International audienceDespite the growing literature on hybrid organizations, little attention has been paid to the micro-processes that sustain their functionality, especially the role of emotions in individuals' efforts to cope with hybrid complexity. We empirically examine, through a case study in the renewable energy sector, how individuals relate emotionally to potentially divergent components of hybrid organizations. Drawing on the literature on psychological bonds and the findings from our case study, we develop a framework that specifies how individuals engage emotionally with the challenges of working in a hybrid organization. Based on this study, we argue that individuals are more likely to succeed in combining or integrating multiple demands when they establish psychological bonds of a medium level intensity to multiple components of a hybrid organization. In contrast, psychological bonds of low or high level intensity tend to undermine their capacity and/or motivation to cope emotionally with hybrid organizations. This framework sheds light on the affective engagement that, in combination with cognitive sensemaking, enables individuals to cope with, and navigate, the inherent paradoxes of working in a hybrid organization

EXPERIMENTATION AND BRICOLAGE ON INSTITUTIONS: UNDERSTANDING THE SELECTION OF NEW ARRANGEMENTS

International audienceThis paper examines how innovative institutional arrangements are generated during processes of institutional bricolage. The aim of the paper is to highlight how an arrangement is selected among the others when many alternative exist or are imaginable. To address this question, we present a qualitative study of institutional bricolage in the context of the making of the European carbon market. We suggest that, during episodes of experimental bricolage, alternative arrangements may be tested and evaluated inside experimental spaces named platforms. We identify three selection mechanisms of innovative arrangements at play inside such platforms: tacit compromise, natural selection and negotiation

Standards and innovation in emerging fields: Pushing breakthrough innovation or enrolling actors? An analysis of eco-district standards in France and Denmark

International audienceStandards and norms are central objects for institutional studies. However, their role in innovation and the creation of novelty remain unclear, in particular in new / emerging fields. Accordingly, this paper investigates the relationship between standard setting and innovation, in the context of emerging organizational fields. We consider standardization in emerging fields as a socio-technical process, which must simultaneously promote a certain degree of innovation and enroll actors in order to succeed. We apply this perspective to compare standardization processes in the field of eco-districts, both in France and Denmark. Our analysis reveals different tensions, tradeoffs and priorities, among standards, between enrolment priorities, and the need to push forward technical innovation. We discuss how the two issues of constraints and enrollment can be articulated and combined

INNOVATION IN SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION: ECO-CITIES AND SOCIAL HOUSING IN FRANCE AND DENMARK

International audienceThe construction sector is often characterized as a reactive sector, as lagging behind other sectors of the economy, notably industry, when it comes to innovation; as mechanically responding to external (client) needs and implementing innovations that originate elsewhere (Winch 1998, Harty 2008). The sector is often presented as un-dynamic and un-innovative and as precluding novel design practices and tools, an orientation that seems to flow from its rigid routines, professional boundaries, division of labor, national legislation, established performance measures, and fixed ideas about best practices. Accordingly, building projects in the construction sector tend to reflect objectives and institutionalized practices other than those related to innovation and sustainability

Impactful theory: pathways to mattering

Organization Theory is an academic journal dedicated to the development and dissemination of novel theory in the domain of organizational scholarship. At the same time, an increasing chorus of organizational scholars have advocated for “impact”—broadly defined as producing societal benefit beyond the realm of academia. In this editorial, we question the implicit dichotomy between theory, on the one hand, and impact, on the other, and critically explore the notion of impactful theory. Rather than seeing theory as inherently opposed to impact, we celebrate and elucidate theory as a meaningful way to achieve impact. Specifically, we unpack the apparent oxymoron of impactful theory, and articulate seven distinct pathways whereby theory can be impactful. We close by outlining several critical questions, both for individual scholars and our collective community, as well as future research directions

Mathematical model of blood and interstitial flow and lymph production in the liver.

We present a mathematical model of blood and interstitial flow in the liver. The liver is treated as a lattice of hexagonal \u2018classic\u2019 lobules, which are assumed to be long enough that end effects may be neglected and a two-dimensional problem considered. Since sinusoids and lymphatic vessels are numerous and small compared to the lobule, we use a homogenized approach, describing the sinusoidal and interstitial spaces as porous media. We model plasma filtration from sinusoids to the interstitium, lymph uptake by lymphatic ducts, and lymph outflow from the liver surface. Our results show that the effect of the liver surface only penetrates a depth of a few lobules\u2019 thickness into the tissue. Thus, we separately consider a single lobule lying sufficiently far from all external boundaries that we may regard it as being in an infinite lattice, and also a model of the region near the liver surface. The model predicts that slightly more lymph is produced by interstitial fluid flowing through the liver surface than that taken up by the lymphatic vessels in the liver and that the on-peritonealized region of the surface of the liver results in the total lymph production (uptake by lymphatics plus fluid crossing surface) being about 5 % more than if the entire surface were covered by the Glisson\u2013peritoneal membrane. Estimates of lymph outflow through the surface of the liver are in good agreement with experimental data. We also study the effect of non-physiological values of the controlling parameters, particularly focusing on the conditions of portal hypertension and ascites. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to model lymph production in the liver. The model provides clinically relevant information about lymph outflow pathways and predicts the systemic response to pathological variations