Bringing artifacts within institutional work: Arese’s artefacts and the institutionalization of socially responsible investment in France



Bernard Leca, Université Paris-Dauphine
Frédérique Déjean, Université de Lorraine
Jean Pascal Gond, Cass Business School
Isabelle Huault, Université Paris-Dauphine

The notion of institutional work has recently been developed to account for the purposive actions whereby actors attempt to create, maintain or disrupt institutions (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006). It intends to complement the strong accounts of how institutions govern actions developed in institutional studies by accounts of how actors attempt to shape institutions. Examining the means by which actors do institutional work, researchers devoted to a great deal of attention to some specific means such as discourse while other means have been overlooked (Levy and Scully, 2007). In particular, the role of artifacts and their influence within institutionalization process has been repeatedly acknowledged to be a missing dimension of research on institutional work, and more generally of current institutional analysis (e.g. Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006; Pinch, 2008;Zilber, 2008). This is especially problematic as organized activities increasingly rely on the use of artifacts (Knorr- Cettina, 2007).

Acknowledging the problem, an increasing number of authors have recently insist on the need to account for the role of artifacts when studying institutional work (e.g. Gawer and Philipps, 2013; Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006). However, despite such calls for more research to be done on the role of artifacts there is little empirical research about how artifacts are used in institutional work and how they influence institutionalization processes.

The present paper seeks to address those calls and advance the integration of artifacts within research on institutional work by investigating how an artifact developed by an actor doing institutional work impacts the institutionalization of new practices. As such our work combines an interest for artifacts, with an interest for the institutionalization of practices. It provides novel insights to our understanding of the influence of artifacts within the institutionalization process, and contribute to bring materiality into the analysis of institutional work.

More specifically, we draw from an in depth qualitative case study of the artifacts introduced by a non-financial rating agency named ARESE and how they influenced the institutionalization of socially responsible investment (SRI) within the French banks. Arese’s action was decisive to structure the activity, so that years 1997 to 2003, when the market really took off are commonly named the “Arese years” (Loiselet, 2003). Central to the action of Arese was the creation of artifacts to articulate their in-house system elaborated to measure corporate social performance and the demands of socially responsible fund managers. We listed three artifacts : rates available on Excel spreadsheet; a sheet with qualitative corporate data and social responsible indexes. We examine how those artifacts facilitate and shaped the institutionalization of SRI among the banks in France ou French financial market? Ou financial market in France? Ce qui permet d’englober d’autres acteurs que les banques?.


We find that those artifacts had four types of effects on the institutionalization of SRI. First they legitimize SRI toward the large financial community. Second they favor the articulation of SRI with the existing routines of fund managers. Third, they limit the involvement of SRI fund managers in the development of the funds. Four they constrain the development of SRI funds that align their activities on what the artifacts made possible. Est-ce qu’on fait un rappel de type : so, these artifacts have both an enabling effect and a constraint effect.

In identifying these types of effects our study makes three important contributions. First, we provide some initial insights into the use of artifacts as a mean to do institutional work. Artifacts appear as very specific means in the way they convey the initial institutional project as they influence the routines. The research also points that while artifacts channel the behavior of actors they also permit some interpretive flexibility, which may vary depending on the artifact, and allow practices to vary within specific limits. Second, we provide some insights on the effects of artifacts within the institutionalization process. The research points to the relation between artifacts and higher level ‘structures’ such as institutional logics, and how this relation can be used for legitimation purposes, as well as how artifacts influence practices through shaping routines and allow actors to limit their involvement as they rely on artifacts. Finally, our work leads to discuss the study of artifacts within the tenets of institutional theory. In particular it points to the importance of the symbolic dimension of artifacts as well as their capacity to shape routines. Furthermore, as institutional theory is initially more preoccupied with symbols and discourse, the present paper offers a framework to integrate artifacts within this approach.

References
Gawer A, Phillips N, (2013). “Institutional Work as Logics Shift: The case of Intel's Transformation to Platform Leader” Organization Studies, Vol:34 :1035-1071

Knorr-Cetina, Karen (1997) “Sociality with objects. Social relations in postsocial knowledge societies” Theory, Culture & Society, No. 4, 1-30.

Lawrence, T. & R. Suddaby. 2006. “Institutions and institutional work”. In: S. Clegg, C. Hardy and T.B. Lawrence, (Eds.), Handbook of Organization Studies (2nd ed.), Sage, London, pp. 215–254.

Levy, D. L., and M. Scully. 2007. “The Institutional Entrepreneur as Modern Prince: The Strategic Face of Power in Contested Fields”, Organization Studies, 28/7: 971-991.

Pinch, T. 2008. “Technology and Institutions,” Theory and Society, 37 : 461-83

Zilber, T. B. (2008). The work of meanings in institutional processes and thinking. In R. Greenwood, C. Oliver, K. Sahlin, & R. Suddaby (Eds.), The Sage handbook of organizational institutionalism (pp. 151–169). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Source:
4th Organizations, Artifacts and Practices (OAP) Workshop Rules, Regulations and Materiality in Management and Organization Studies, 26th and 27th June 2014, Roma (LUISS), Italy Editors:Nathalie Mitev (London School of Economics), François-Xavier de Vaujany (Paris-Dauphine), Paolo Spagnoletti (LUISS Guido Carli), With the help of: Yesh Nama (ESSEC Business School)

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