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This special section seeks to enrich research on the field by using neo-institutional theory to describe, explain and understand the activities, processes and dynamics of public relations. By this we open up for a wider understanding of public relations, its preconditions, its performances and its consequences for shaping the social. We argue that public relations could be analyzed as an institutionalized practice with certain set of governing mechanisms including taken-for-granted activities, rules, norms and ideas. Here neo-institutional theory is well situated as it is a tradition where communication is put at fore in the understanding of organizations, institutions and society. Another argument for this is recent developments where public relations and other forms of organizational communication have been examined as a major dimension of organizing in some of the more profound works among neo-institutional theorists. The article starts with a discussion of earlier work in the tradition of neo-institutional theory were a lot of attention was paid to the governing mechanisms of institutions and how they control the behaviour of actors. A perspective leading to some fundamental challenges where the primary objections were raised against the over-determinism neo-institutional researchers ascribed institutions. Taking these objectives seriously has served as a source of extensive theoretical and empirical puzzles characterizing many of the contemporary efforts – most of them explicitly emphasizing the role of communication and symbolical/rethorical means as essential in all institutional processes. Among these we find three streams we find relevant and fruitful for analyses of public relations: institutional logics, translation and institutional work. These themes are further developed in text and discussed in releationship to what implications they have on public relations research. How an employment of the logic can help us gain a more profound understanding of public relations and communication as an institutional practice. How public relations function as a carrier and translator of institutions. How public relations is used to challenge and re-shape the foundations on which social actors interact with each other.

This case study explores a new method of analyzing an organization's strategy manifested in its strategic communications, which are intentionally produced documents such as press releases, intra-organizational newsletters, advertising, and many others. It employs ethnographic content analysis, a mixed methods form of research uncommon with the business and management discipline, designed to simultaneously examine documents in a quantitative and qualitative fashion. It leverages a recent transdisciplinary adaption to the traditionally management-focused neo-institutional theory, which has proved that organizations follow predictable patterns of behavior that are both institutionally and culturally prescribed. This theoretical adaptation offers three principles to guide an organization to implement the goals of neo-institutional theory: (1) Providing signal of compliance with existing cultural rules; (2) promoting, which attempts to modify existing rules in a manner that benefits the organization; and (3) co-opting the behaviors of other organizations to achieve cooperation and collaboration on institutional norms for a collective benefit. All of these practices serve an organization's strategy in a variety of ways from influencing regulation to marketing. Applying ethnographic content analysis to examine an organization's strategic communications through the lens of neo-institutional theory provides a range of benefits from competitor analysis to internal-external organizationally commissioned communications audits.

The purpose of this article is to point to a number of methodological and theoretical problems connected with a theory of institutional change. Nine philosophical‐methodological questions are asked dealing with a wide range of problems rarely raised in neo‐institutional political theory. The questions concern the concept of the state, of institutions, and of language and discourse, and deal with the dialectic between individuals and institutions, choice and rationality, formal organizations and institutions as well as prescriptive versus normative analysis. A critical theory of meaning is sought in order to develop neo‐institutionalism from a research program into an actual set of descriptive and interpretative theories.

Purpose Neo-institutional theory (NIT) has strengthened its position as one of the theories and frameworks used to investigate accounting as organizational, legislative, social and policymaking phenomena. This study aims to review how aspects of NIT are used and understood by accounting researchers. As a growing body of accounting and auditing articles in recent years has used NIT as a theoretical framework, this paper reviews and analyzes articles using NIT. Design/methodology/approach This study develops a comprehensive synthesis of current academic knowledge about NIT in accounting and auditing regulation literature. Further, it reveals areas requiring further examination. Findings The findings of this study indicate that prior studies have found evidence that accounting and auditing regulation is associated with all forms of isomorphism (coercive, mimetic and normative). For instance, institutional pressures influence the accounting and auditing standards adoption in different environments. Therefore, the synthesis of the literature suggests that coercive, mimetic and normative pressures have played a significant role in the harmonization of accounting and auditing practices worldwide. To conclude, NIT has become one of the relevant alternative approaches used to explore accounting and auditing regulation as a complex phenomenon. Research limitations/implications Accounting has often been referred to as a "narrow" and "technical" topic. In a way, NIT broadens the research field by extending, for instance, the approach of which external and internal pressures are associated with accounting standards adoption and why different accounting practices are adopted. Originality/value This study informs accounting scholars as to how NIT has been applied, and can be applied, in the accounting and auditing regulation literature. This benefits accounting researchers if they are considering whether to use NIT in their research. This study evaluates the contribution of NIT within this research field. It can be suggested that accounting researchers need to become more aware of the debates within the NIT literature, particularly as the theory is seen as conceptually ambiguous. To conclude, the synthesis highlights that NIT has offered a range of important contributions and has drawn attention to the link between accounting and auditing regulation research and the institutional environment. ; ©2022 Emerald Publishing Limited. This manuscript version is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY–NC 4.0) license, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ; fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed|

Values and emotions are an integral part of actors who inhabit institutions. Their importance, however, has been overlooked in the literature on microfoundations of neo-institutional theory, harboring the risks of falling back to the conceptualization of social actors as value-free, rational agents. In this dissertation, I seek to understand the depth and breath of actors' values and emotions in institutional processes through a 212-day ethnographic study of multiple religious organizations in Indonesia. Through two empirical studies I have managed to infuse the neglected yet essential concepts of values and emotions into the phenomenological foundations of neo-institutional theory. Specifically, I offer a more nuanced understanding of the dynamic mechanisms of how values and emotions are connected, how they are translated into different types of institutional work, and how their galvanizing power is restricted by systemic power or institutional contexts. Finally, findings from these studies carry relevant and far-reaching implications for corporate or governmental organizations whose leaders have absolute power over their followers or whose institutional contexts vary from facile to hostile.

We trace the development of neo-institutional theory in Organization Studies from a marginal topic to the dominant theory. We show how it has evolved from infancy, through adolescence and early adulthood to being a fully mature theory, which we think is now facing a mid-life crisis. Some of the features of this mid-life crisis include over-reach, myopia, tautology, pseudo-progress and re-inventing the wheel. To address these problems, we argue that institutional theorists should limit the range of the concept, sharpen their lens, avoid tautologies and problematize the concept. By doing this, we think institutional theorists could develop a narrower and more focused conception of institutions.

Gender and cultural diversity have not been thoroughly studied in the literature devoted to the diplomatic system. The fundamental reason behind this gender blindness reflects the presumption that institutions are gender-neutral. Feminist literature has longed argued that gender has effects in political life and recent engagement with neo-institutionalist literature has analysed how institutions rebalance the structure/agency scale, pushing for a better understanding of the co-constitutive nature of politics. This article uses feminist neo-institutional theory to analyse whether recent internal and external changes to diplomatic practice are affecting formal and informal rules of diplomacy and improving women's agency within diplomatic institutions.

Swedish public administration is currentlyundergoing radical change towards dynamic modelsof governance relying on a high level of intergovernmentalcollaboration. This high level ofinteroperability between governmental organizationsand the subsequent quality of service for citizens andcompanies depending on the services provided bygovernment is summarized in the vision-statement ofthe 24-hour government (24-timmarsmyndigheten).According to the primary actor's (Statskontoret)recommendation, this vision is to be realized throughthe application of web-service based technology,resulting in a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).The purpose of this paper is to investigate a possibleinfusion of a previously developed architecturalframework for change management with neoinstitutionaltheory. The results show that neoinstitutionaltheory could be used to infuse thearchitectural framework with aspects regardingprimarily history and legitimacy, but also with anoverall contradictory perception of change. Given thevast differences in fundamental assumptionsunderlying the architectural framework and neoinstitutionaltheory, the paper concludes that theseresults are however somewhat problematic.

International audience ; Drawing on neo-institutional theory, this study aims to discern the poorly understood ethical challenges confronted by senior executives in Indian multinational corporations and identify the strategies that they utilize to overcome them. We conducted in-depth interviews with 40 senior executives in Indian multinational corporations to illustrate these challenges and strategies. By embedding our research in contextually relevant characteristics that embody the Indian environment, we identify several institutional- and managerial-level challenges faced by executives. The institutional-level challenges are interpreted as regulative, normative and cognitive shortcomings. We recommend a concerted effort at the institutional and managerial levels by identifying relevant strategies for ethical decision-making. Moreover, we proffer a multi-level model of ethical decision-making and discuss our theoretical contributions and practical implications.