Bringing institutional change inside the organization: Staff professionals as key enablers

• Main Authors: DAUDIGEOS, Thibault, PITESA, Marko
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2011
• Subjects: Institutional work; Intraorganizational; Profession; Organizational Behavior and Theory
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/5149; https://doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2011.65869687
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This paper examines which structural conditions enable staff professionals within organizations to conduct institutional work through an inductive case study of occupational health and safety professionals selected from a sample of 231 subsidiaries of a large construction company. Professionals within organizations act as institutional workers transferring the institutional forces of their professions to organizational institutional setups and thus play an important role in institutional change and diffusion in general. We construct a framework of how staff professionals within organizations act as institutional workers, consisting of three activities: getting institutional support, manufacturing consent, and mobilizing allies to share the load of the institutionalization process. We then analyze the structural conditions necessary for functional workers to become institutional workers. We propose structural nomadism of employed professionals as a key enabler of these work processes.