Abstract
Many organizations must manage institutional complexity – the presence of competing “logics,” or patterned sets of beliefs, rules, and actions. Some of this management occurs within organizations, such as when managers recruit workers who align with a preferred logic. Often, however, institutional management occurs at the boundaries between organizations that work together despite adhering to competing logics. Boundary-spanners – actors belonging to one organization but interfacing with others – must know how to speak the language of their organizational partners in order to secure resources and accomplish their host organization’s goals. Existing literature on boundary-spanners’ institutional management strategies focuses on organizational elites like executives, top managers, and technical experts. As organizations, particularly social service organizations, become increasingly decentralized, however, boundary-spanning occurs at lower-levels of organizational hierarchies. Drawing on 30 months of participant observation and 20 in-depth interviews in a rape crisis center, I show how low-level organization members like volunteers, who frequently interact with organizational partners including law enforcement and medical professionals, learn to navigate institutional complexity. This advances neoinstitutional theory by showing how in decentralized, diffuse organizations, both organizational elites and members at low-levels of the organizational hierarchy must competently manage their institutional environments.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data Availability
Not applicable.
Notes
I recognize that phrases like “post-bureaucracy” and “post-Fordism” are contested –new organizational forms represent a shifting configuration of coercive and hierarchical bureaucracy rather than an abandonment of bureaucracy altogether (Briand and Bellemare 2006; Graham 1992; McSweeney 2006). Still, the generally trends associated with the phrase remain common, even if the phrases are overly-binaric.
The Center for Healthy Futures is a pseudonym. Participants’ names, too, are pseudonyms.
References
Aldrich, H., & Herker, D. (1977). Boundary spanning roles and organization structure. The Academy of Management Review, 2, 217–230. https://doi.org/10.2307/257905.
Almandoz, J. (2014). Founding teams as carriers of competing logics: When institutional forces predict banks’ risk exposure. Administrative Science Quarterly, 59(3), 442–473. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001839214537810.
Anteby, M. (2010). Markets, Morals, and Practices of Trade: Jurisdictional Disputes in the U.S. Commerce in Cadavers. Administrative Science Quarterly, 55(4), 606–38. https://doi.org/10.2189/asqu.2010.55.4.606
Arnold, G., & Ake, J. (2013). Reframing the narrative of the battered Women’s movement. Violence Against Women, 19(5), 557–578. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801213490508.
Barman, E. (2016). Varieties of field theory and the sociology of the non-profit sector: Field theory and non-profits. Sociology Compass, 10(6), 442–458. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12377.
Battilana, J., & Dorado, S. (2010). Building sustainable hybrid organizations: The case of commercial microfinance organizations. The Academy of Management Journal, 53(6), 1419–1440.
Beaudry, M. (1985). Battered women. Montreal: Black Rose Books.
Bevacqua, M. (2000). Rape on the public agenda: Feminism and the politics of sexual assault. UPNE.
Binder, A. (2007). For love and money: Organizations’ creative responses to multiple environmental logics. Theory and society, 36(6), 547–571. Retrieved from JSTOR
Birkinshaw, J., Ambos, T. C., & Bouquet, C. (2017). Boundary spanning activities of Corporate HQ executives insights from a longitudinal study. Journal of Management Studies, 54(4), 422–454. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12260.
Bjerregaard, T., & Jonasson, C. (2014). Managing unstable institutional contradictions: The work of becoming. Organization Studies, 35(10), 1507–1536. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840614530913.
Bjerregaard, T., & Lauring, J. (2012). Entrepreneurship as Institutional Change: Strategies of Bridging Institutional Contradictions (SSRN scholarly paper no. ID 2043457). Retrieved from social science research network website: https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2043457
Briand, L., & Bellemare, G. (2006). A Structurationist Analysis of Post‐bureaucracy in Modernity and Late Modernity” edited by M. Harris and H. Höpfl. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 19(1), 65–79. https://doi.org/10.1108/09534810610643695
Brownmiller, S. (1975). Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape. Open Road Media.
Bumiller, K. (2008). In an abusive state: How neoliberalism appropriated the feminist movement against sexual violence. Durham: Duke University Press Books.
Burawoy, M. (1998). The extended case method. Sociological Theory, 16(1), 4–33. https://doi.org/10.1111/0735-2751.00040.
Clemens, E. S., & Guthrie, D. (Eds.). (2010). Politics and partnerships: The role of voluntary associations in America’s political past and present. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Corrigan, R. (2013). Up against a wall: Rape reform and the failure of success. NYU Press.
D’Aunno, T., Sutton, R. I., & Price, R. H. (1991). Isomorphism and external support in conflicting institutional environments: A study of drug abuse treatment units. Academy of Management Journal, 34(3), 636–661. https://doi.org/10.5465/256409.
Davis, L. V., & Carlson, B. E. (1987). Observation of spouse abuse: What happens to the children? Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2(3), 278–291.
D’Emilio, J., Freedman, E. B., & Freedman, E. E. (1997). Intimate matters: A history of sexuality in America. University of Chicago Press.
DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1983). The Iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review, 48(2), 147–160. https://doi.org/10.2307/2095101.
Dobash, R. E., & Dobash, R. (1983). Violence against wives: A case against the patriarchy. New York: The Free Press.
Echols, A. [1989];(2019). Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967-1975, Thirtieth Anniversary Edition. Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota Press.
Eliasoph, N. (2013). Making volunteers: Civic life after Welfare’s end. Princeton University Press.
Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. L. (2011). Writing ethnographic Fieldnotes, second edition (Second ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Fiss, P. C., & Zajac, E. J. (2016). The diffusion of ideas over contested terrain: The (non)adoption of a shareholder value orientation among German firms: Administrative Science Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.2307/4131489.
Freedman, E. B. (2013). Redefining Rape. Harvard University Press.
Friedland, R., & Alford, R. A. (1991). Bringing society back in: Symbols, practices and institutional contradictions. In W. W. Powell & P. DiMaggio (Eds.), The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (pp. 232–263). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Getman, K. A. (1984). Sexual control in the slaveholding south: The implementation and maintenance of a racial caste system notes. Harvard Women’s Law Journal, 7, 115–152.
Graham, J. (1992). Anti-Essentialism and Overdetermination – a Response to Dick Peet. Antipode, 24(2), 141–56. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.1992.tb00434.x
Greenberg, M. A. (2019). Twelve weeks to change a life: At-risk youth in a fractured state (First ed.). Oakland: University of California Press.
Greenwood, R., Oliver, C., Lawrence, T. B., & Meyer, R. E. (2017). The SAGE handbook of organizational institutionalism. New York: Sage Publishing.
Greenwood, R., Raynard, M., Kodeih, F., Micelotta, E. R., & Lounsbury, M. (2011). Institutional Complexity and Organizational Responses. Academy of Management Annals, 5(1), 317–71. https://doi.org/10.5465/19416520.2011.590299
Grey, C., & Garsten, C. (2001). Trust, control and post-bureaucracy. Organization Studies, 22(2), 229–250. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840601222003.
Gruber, A. (2020). The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women’s Liberation in Mass Incarceration (first edition). University of California Press.
Gümüsay, A. A., Smets, M., & Morris, T. (2020). ‘God at Work’: Engaging central & incompatible institutional logics through elastic hybridity. Academy of Management Journal, 63(1), 124–154.
Hallett, T., & Ventresca, M. J. (2006). Inhabited institutions: Social interactions and organizational forms in Gouldner’s patterns of industrial bureaucracy. Theory and Society, 35(2), 213–236. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-006-9003-z.
Handy, F., Mook, L., & Quarter, J. (2008). The interchangeability of paid staff and volunteers in nonprofit organizations. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 37(1), 76–92. https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764007303528.
Harvey, D. (1991). The condition of postmodernity: An enquiry into the origins of cultural change. Wiley-Blackwell.
Hasday, J. (2000). Contest and consent: A legal history of marital rape. California Law Review, 88, 1373. https://doi.org/10.2307/3481263.
Heimer, C. A. (1999). Competing institutions: Law, medicine, and family in neonatal intensive care. Law & Society Review, 33(1), 17–66. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/3115095.
Henriksen, L. S., Smith, S. R., & Zimmer, A. (2015). Welfare mix and hybridity. Flexible adjustments to changed environments. Introduction to the Special Issue. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 26(5), 1591–1600. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-015-9622-y.
Hensmans, M. (2003). Social Movement Organizations: A Metaphor for Strategic Actors in Institutional Fields. Organization Studies, 24(3), 355–81. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840603024003908
INCITE. (2017). The revolution will not be funded: Beyond the non-profit industrial complex. Durham: Duke University Press.
Jarzabkowski, P., Lê, J. K., & Van de Ven, A. H. (2013). Responding to competing strategic demands: How organizing, belonging, and performing paradoxes coevolve. Strategic Organization, 11(3), 245–280. https://doi.org/10.1177/1476127013481016.
Jay, J. (2012). Navigating paradox as a mechanism of change and innovation in hybrid organizations. Academy of Management Journal, 56(1), 137–159. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2010.0772.
Kalleberg, A. L. (2001). Organizing flexibility: The flexible firm in a new century. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 39(4), 479–504. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8543.00211.
Kalleberg, A. L. (2003). Flexible firms and labor market segmentation: Effects of workplace restructuring on jobs and workers. Work and Occupations, 30(2), 154–175. https://doi.org/10.1177/0730888403251683.
Kalleberg, A. L. (2009). Precarious work, insecure workers: Employment relations in transition. American Sociological Review, 74(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/000312240907400101.
Kelly, J. (2012). Rethinking industrial relations: Mobilisation. Collectivism and Long Waves: Routledge.
Kim, M. E. (2020). The Carceral creep: Gender-based violence, race, and the expansion of the punitive state, 1973–1983. Social Problems, 67(2), 251–269. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spz013.
Kitchener, M. (2002). Mobilizing the Logic of Managerialism in Professional Fields: The Case of Academic Health Centre Mergers. Organization Studies, 23(3), 391–420. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840602233004
Kraatz, M. S. and Block, E.S. 2008. “Organizational Implications of Institutional Pluralism.” Pp. 243–75 in The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
Lash, S., & Urry, J. (1987). The End of Organized Capitalism (1 edition). University of Wisconsin Press.
Lehrner, A., & Allen, N. E. (2009). Still a movement after all these years?: Current tensions in the domestic violence movement. Violence Against Women, 15, 656–677. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801209332185.
Lounsbury, M. (2001). Institutional sources of practice variation: Staffing college and university recycling programs. Administrative Science Quarterly, 46(1), 29–56. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/2667124.
Mair, J., Mayer, J., & Lutz, E. (2015). Navigating institutional plurality: Organizational governance in hybrid Organizations: Organization Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840615580007.
Maravelias, C. (2003). Post-bureaucracy – Control through professional freedom. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 16(5), 547–566. https://doi.org/10.1108/09534810310494937.
Markowitz, L., & Tice, K. W. (2002). Paradoxes of professionalization: Parallel dilemmas in Women’s organizations in the Americas. Gender & Society, 16(6), 941–958. https://doi.org/10.1177/089124302237896.
Martin, D. (1987). The historical roots of domestic violence. In D. J. Sonkin (Ed.), Domestic violence on trial: Psychological and legal dimensions of family violence. New York: Springer Publishing Co..
Martin, P. Y. (1990). Rethinking feminist organizations. Gender & Society, 4(2), 182–206. https://doi.org/10.1177/089124390004002004.
Martin, P. Y. (2005). Rape work: Victims, gender, and emotions in organization and community context. Routledge.
McGuire, D. L. (2011). At the dark end of the street: Black women, rape, and resistance- a new history of the civil rights movement from Rosa parks to the rise of black power. Vintage Books.
McPherson, C. M., & Sauder, M. (2013). Logics in action: Managing institutional complexity in a drug court. Administrative Science Quarterly, 58(2), 165–196. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001839213486447.
McSweeney, B. (2006). “Are We Living in a Post‐bureaucratic Epoch?” edited by M. Harris and H. Höpfl. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 19(1), 22–37. https://doi.org/10.1108/09534810610643668
Messner, M. A., Greenberg, M. A., & Peretz, T. (2015). Some men: Feminist allies and the movement to end violence against women. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Milward, H. B., & Provan, K. (2003). Managing the hollow state collaboration and contracting. Public Management Review, 5(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461667022000028834.
Mudambi, R., & Swift, T. (2011). Leveraging knowledge and competencies across space: The next frontier in international business. Journal of International Management, 17(3), 186–189. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intman.2011.05.001.
Nagel, J. (2003). Race, ethnicity, and sexuality: Intimate intersections. Forbidden Frontiers: Oxford University Press.
Pache, A.-C., & Santos, F. (2013). Embedded in hybrid contexts: How individuals in organizations respond to competing institutional logics. In Research in the Sociology of Organizations: Vol. 39 Part B. Institutional Logics in Action, Part B (pp. 3–35). https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X(2013)0039AB014.
Pizzey, E. (1974). Scream quietly or the Neighbours will hear. London: Penguin Press.
Rao, H., Monin, P., & Durand, R. (2003). Institutional change in toque Ville: Nouvelle cuisine as an identity movement in French gastronomy. American Journal of Sociology, 108(4), 795–843. https://doi.org/10.1086/367917.
Reay, T., & Hinings, C. R. (2009). Managing the rivalry of competing institutional logics. Organization Studies, 30(6), 629–652. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840609104803.
Richie, B. E. (2012). Arrested justice: Black women, violence, and America’s prison nation. NYU Press.
Salamon, L. M. (1995). Partners in Public Service: Government-nonprofit relations in the modern welfare state. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Schotter, A., & Beamish, P. W. (2011). Performance effects of MNC headquarters–subsidiary conflict and the role of boundary spanners: The case of headquarter initiative rejection. Journal of International Management, 17(3), 243–259. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intman.2011.05.006.
Scott, W. R. (2013). Institutions and organizations: Ideas, interests, and identities. SAGE Publications.
Scott, W. R., Ruef, M., Mendel, P., & Caronna, C. (2000). Institutional Change and Healthcare Organizations: From Professional Dominance to Managed Care. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Smets, M., Jarzabkowski, P., Burke, G. T., & Spee, P. (2014). Reinsurance trading in Lloyd’s of London: Balancing conflicting-yet-complementary logics in practice. Academy of Management Journal, 58(3), 932–970. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2012.0638.
Smith, S. R., & Lipsky, M. (1995). Nonprofits for Hire: The Welfare State in the Age of Contracting. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Smith, S. R., & Lipsky, M. (2010). Nonprofits for hire: The welfare state in the age of contracting. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Thornton, P. H. (2001). Personal Versus Market Logics of Control: A Historically Contingent Theory of the Risk of Acquisition. Organization Science, 12(3), 294–311.
Thornton, P. H., Lounsbury, M., & Ocasio, W. (2012). The institutional logics perspective: A new approach to culture, structure and process (1 edition). Oxford: Oxford University Press, USA.
Thornton, P. H., & Ocasio, W. (1999). Institutional logics and the historical contingency of power in organizations: Executive succession in the higher education publishing industry, 1958-1990. American Journal of Sociology, 105(3), 801–843. https://doi.org/10.1086/210361.
Thornton, R. G., & Ocasio, W. (2008). Institutional logics. In R. Greenwood, C. Oliver, K. Sahlin Andersson, & R. Suddaby (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism (pp. 99–129). London: Sage.
Turco, C. (2012). Difficult decoupling: Employee resistance to the commercialization of personal settings. American Journal of Sociology, 118(2), 380–419. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.1086/666505.
Tushman, M. L., & Scanlan, T. J. (1981). Boundary spanning individuals: Their role in information transfer and their antecedents. Academy of Management Journal, 24(2), 289–305. https://doi.org/10.5465/255842.
Waring, J., Currie, G., & Bishop, S. (2013). A contingent approach to the organization and Management of Public–Private Partnerships: An empirical study of English health care. Public Administration Review, 73(2), 313–326. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12020.
Zilber, T. B. (2002). Institutionalization as an interplay between actions, meanings, and actors: The case of a rape crisis Center in Israel. The Academy of Management Journal, 45(1), 234–254. https://doi.org/10.2307/3069294.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflicts of interest
The author has no conflicts of interest to report.
Code availability
Not applicable.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Weiss, B.R. “When you’re here, you’re not a militant feminist”: volunteer professionalization in a rape crisis center. Theor Soc 50, 231–254 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-020-09420-2
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-020-09420-2