Different Organizational Responses to the Same Institutional Complexity: A Study of U.S. Art Museums

Abstract

This dissertation develops a theoretical framework to explain the role of organizational discretion in the strategic choices to manage institutional complexity. I suggest that organizations balance multiple logics in different ways (by separating or integrating logics in their practices) or prioritize one logic over the others, depending on the degree of their organizational discretion, which is reflected by their status, resource autonomy, resource richness, and stakeholder configuration. The empirical analysis utilizes a field of U.S. art museums where market and profession logics collide. Using an 8-year longitudinal data of 23 art museums, I find that high-status museums and the museums with low resource autonomy balance competing logics by focusing on one logic in each activity (i.e., separation), while museums with large resources achieve the balance by integrating logics (i.e., integration). I also find that the museums with a dominant stakeholder are more likely to focus on their dominant stakeholders’ logic (i.e., defiance) instead of balancing the two logics in their institutional field when they have low resource-autonomy. The dissertation provides a unique and unprecedented information about why organizations within the same institutional field respond differently to their complexity.