In recent years, institutional theorists have been increasingly interested in institutional change, seeking to understand the contextual factors and agents responsible for alterations to existing institutional arrangements. Institutional theory’s historical focus on isomorphism has made it challenging to account for actors’ motivations to pursue change projects. It is generally believed, though, that agents are mobilized through exposure to multiple institutional logics. Recently, scholars have begun to recognize that competition among multiple logics may not quickly produce a ‘winning logic’; rather, such logics may co-exist for prolonged periods in a context of ‘institutional complexity’. The turn toward institutional complexity reveals that preoccupation with the ‘paradox of embedded agency’ has left the development of change projects themselves under-theorized: What happens when organizational actors must interpret puzzling institutional contexts and generate alternatives? In seeking to understand organizational actors’ efforts to cope with conflicting logics in a context of scientific uncertainty, this study aligns with this growing interest in institutional complexity. Drawing on concepts from sensemaking theory, this research illuminates how actors with divergent interests, enacting their organizational roles, cope with competing logics and interact around a change project that emerges as a result of their efforts at coping. It thus contributes to institutionalist understandings of institutional complexity and change and adds to an emerging body of research linking institutional theory and sensemaking. The empirical setting for this single-case study is the ‘sustainable seafood’ discourse that began in the early 1990s when the cod collapsed off North America’s eastern seaboard. Prolonged scientific uncertainty regarding the collapse made generation of preferred alternatives problematic; this resulted in lengthy sensemaking efforts by multiple stakeholder groups, drawing on different institutional logics to produce divergent and competing interpretations and action scripts. Tracing the evolution of this discourse through documents, observations, and interviews empirically reveals processes of interrelated sensemaking, and further, exposes sensegivers as bricoleurs who use institutional elements creatively to affect the sensemaking of others.

Titel: Faktorer som kan påverka företags val mellan K2 och K3 Författare: Angelica Höglund och Julia Wiman Handledare: Klas Sundberg Bakgrund och problem: Det nya K-regelverket som infördes 1 januari 2014 innebär att mindre onoterade företag idag har valmöjligheten att välja mellan regelverken K2 och K3. För dessa mindre företag är valet av regelverk viktigt då det kommer att påverka företagets räkenskaper. Syfte: Syftet med studien är att studera fördelningen av K2 och K3 för mindre onoterade företag inom två olika branscher, dessa är byggbranschen och juridik,- ekonomi- och konsultbranschen, samt vilka faktorer som kan påverka valet av regelverk. Teori: Studien bygger på två teorier, dessa är positive accounting theory och institutionell teori. Metod: I studien används en kvantitativ forskningsmetod där årsredovisningar har granskats och sammanställts, samt en kvalitativ metod som bygger på fyra semistrukturerade intervjuer där de identifierade faktorerna analyserats utifrån en analysmodell. Resultat och slutsats: Utifrån det empiriska materialet identifierades sju faktorer, dessa var leasing, företagets storlek, rättvisande bild, revisorns påverkan, komponentavskrivning, kostnad/nytta och koncernredovisning. Ovanstående faktorer har kategoriserats och analyserats utifrån PAT och institutionell teori. Förslag till vidare forskning: Ett förslag vore att forska vidare på de identifierade faktorerna för att undersöka i hur stor utsträckning de påverkar företagens beslut. En intressant studie hade även varit att genomföra en fallstudie som utgår från att upprätta en årsredovisning utifrån både K2 och K3 för att studera de skillnader som kan uppkomma. / Title: Factors that may affect the company's choice between K2 and K3 Author: Angelica Höglund and Julia Wiman Advisor: Klas Sundberg Background and problem: The new K- regulations were introduced 1th of January 2014 and means that small unlisted companies today have the option to choose between the regulations K2 and K3. For these smaller companies is the choice of the regulatory framework important because it will affect the company's accounts. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to study the distribution of K2 and K3 for small unlisted companies in two different industries, these are the construction industry and law - financial and consulting industry, and the factors that may influence the choice of rules. Theory: The study is based on two theories, these are positive accounting theory and institutional theory. Method: The study used a quantitative research method in which the financial statements have been reviewed and compiled, as well as a qualitative methodology based on four semistructured interviews in which the identified factors analyzed from an analytical model. Results and conclusion: Based on the empirical material seven factors were identified, these were leasing, company size, true and fair view, the auditors influence, component depreciation, cost/benefit and accounting for corporate groups. The above factors have been categorized and analyzed based on the PAT and institutional theory. Suggestions for further research: One suggestion would be to further research on the identified factors to consider to what extent they influence corporate decisions. An interesting study had also been carrying out a case study based on the preparation of annual accounts on the basis of both K2 and K3 to study the differences that may arise

<p>In society today large corporations are striving to regain the trust, which has been lost dur-ing the many accounting scandals that occurred lately. As a response to minimize the con-flicts countries have introduced codes of corporate governance. It is common knowledge that a company’s stakeholders and shareholders have different knowledge and interest in the company and the annual report is the agent’s main communication channel towards the principals. The Swedish code of corporate governance was implemented in July 2005 in an attempt to reduce the information gap between the managers of the company and the own-ers.</p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to examine if and how the Swedish code of corporate govern-ance has affected the content in annual reports in Sweden. We will evaluate and explain why listed companies have changed the information provided in their annual reports from the year 2001 prior to the codes existence, during the code’s implementation in year 2005, and after the implementation in 2006.</p><p>A deductive method created our research model, which was used as a tool to gather the empirical findings. Agency Theory, Institutional Theory and the Swedish code constitute the foundation for our evaluation of 65 companies’ annual reports from three individual years. Once our research model was created, an explorative and inductive method was used analyse and interpret the empirical findings.</p><p>Our conclusion is that corporate governance information in annual reports has increased, and the implementation of the Swedish code of corporate governance has affected the in-formation provided to the shareholders. Between 2001 and 2005 a rapid growth in infor-mation can be view, while only minor improvement can be found between 2005 and 2006. The Swedish code has been successful in its implementation as stakeholders and share-holders have received more information from the annual reports. However, we are ques-tioning the Swedish code for its extensive dimensions. Some areas of the Swedish code are provided with sufficient guidelines, while others would bring with it improved information to the shareholders by more detailed instructions. Many of the investigated companies have had their corporate governance information reviewed by an external auditor in 2005 and it is unexpected to see that this has been excluded in 2006. The examined companies provide information regarding many of the Swedish code’s rules, but we found the information re-lated to internal control, managing director and attendance at the general meeting insuffi-cient.</p>

Changes in the workplace have led to new ways of organizing and structuring organizations. Organizations’ desire to increase competitiveness, efficiency and flexibility has resulted in new conditions in the field of human resources. The new conditions have also created new roles and changing responsibilities for those working within human resources. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the implementation of Ulrich's model for HR transformation can impact on the human resource departments managerial support to first-line managers in the municipality of Uppsala. Today the municipality of Uppsala organizes its human resources based on the Ulrich's model, which divides the work into the units service center, the expert unit and business partners. The study is based on eight interviews with employees in the department of human resources, first-line managers and human resource managers within the organization. Their experiences of the new organizational model were examined. The study indicates that the managerial support generally is perceived as functioning adequately. The implementation of Ulrich's model, however, appears to have led to decreased knowledge about the activities in the sub-units of the overall organization when the human resource department is centralized. The reorganization also seems to have led to a lack of clarity regarding who is responsible for human resource issues. Raised uncertainties seem to have created subjective interpretations regarding who is responsible for what. The study illustrates, firstly, experiences of the employees of the human resource department of providing management support, and secondly first-line managers' experiences of the support.

Pension capital is the single largest block of capital in the global domain of finance and a transformative social force. However, the studies on pension fund capitalism have been geographically limited. Although vast pools of pension capital have been generated outside the Anglo-American institutional environments, we still have little knowledge on the social construction of pension fund capitalism outside that context. The purpose of the study is to develop theoretical-methodological tools for studying the institutional differences in pension fund investments with habitual institutionalist theory at the level of organisation fields, and to apply these tools in an empirical case study that has theoretical relevance concerning the recent financialisation of European pension provision. The case study is focussed on the field of Finnish pension insurance companies that execute the nationally mandatory partly funded TyEL pension scheme. The case study includes a single case analysis at the organisation field level with embedded case analyses on the investment processes in two companies. The study is based on multiple sources of textual and interview data gathered and analysed with content analysis. It is argued that the institutional life of Finnish pension insurance company investments illustrates divergence from the Anglo-American pension fund capitalism and has reinforced elastic institutional solutions especially in domains of governance and regulation even under Europe-wide financialisation pressures. The Finnish case shows that there are alternative institutional solutions for various domains of pension fund capitalism, but the strong Europe-wide trends have all characterised recent institutional change in the TyEL field as well. It is concluded that although the European shift towards pension fund capitalism with the generation of increasingly independent portfolio investors with increasingly principle-based regulation and risk-based supervision has not necessarily implied strong institutional convergence, the European pension investors are likely to share a number of common questions in the future.

This study focuses on the institutionalization of information security in the banking sector. This study is important to pursue since it explicates the internalization of information security governance and practices and how such internalization develops an organizational resistance towards security breach. The study argues that information security governance and practices become institutionalized through social integration of routines and system integration of relevant technologies. The objective is to develop an understanding of how information security governance and practices in the Indonesian banking sector become institutionalized. Such objective is built on an argument that information security governance and practices become institutionalized through social integration of routines and system integration of relevant technologies. Pursuing this study is necessary to conceptualize the incorporation of security governance and practices as routines, the impact of security breaches on such routines, and the effects of a central governing body on such routines altogether. Accordingly, the concept of institutionalization is developed using Barley and Tolbert’s (1997) combination of institutional theory and structuration theory to explain the internalization of security governance and practices at an organizational level. Scott’s (2008) multilevel institutional processes based on institutional theory is needed to elaborate security governance and practices in an organization-to-organization context. The research design incorporates the interpretive case-study method to capture communicative interactions among respondents. Doing so provides answers to the following research questions: (1) how institutions internalize information security governance and practices, (2) how an external governing body affects the institutionalization of information security governance and practices in institutions, and (3) how security breaches re-institutionalize information security governance and practices in institutions. Several important findings include the habitualized security routines, information stewardship, and institutional relationship in information-security context. This study provides contributions to the body of literature, such as depicting how information security becomes internalized in an organization and the interaction among organizations engaged in implementing information security.

Les récentes réformes inspirées de la nouvelle gestion publique font de la comptabilité analytique hospitalière une pièce maîtresse du financement et de la gouvernance des établissements de soins français. Les coûts unitaires par séjour alimentent en effet à la fois le processus d'élaboration des tarifs et les nouveaux instruments de gestion supposés améliorer l'efficience hospitalière. Ce travail confronte la comptabilité analytique en vigueur à une méthode basée sur les activités pour calculer les coûts unitaires d'un échantillon de 2130 interventions chirurgicales réalisées consécutivement au CHU de Montpellier en 2009. Il montre que les deux méthodes sont discordantes et que, en outre, la méthode actuelle reflète mal la complexité réelle de la prise en charge des patients au bloc opératoire. La théorie néoinstitutionnelle suggère que le développement de la comptabilité analytique hospitalière, structure organisationnelle formelle, est un processus isomorphique par lequel les établissements de santé internalisent le mythe rationalisé du calcul des coûts des séjours. Pour pouvoir répondre aux contraintes et à la complexité du réel, un certain degré de découplage entre cette comptabilité et l'activité réelle apparaît. La comptabilité analytique ne serait donc plus seulement un instrument au service de l'efficience des hôpitaux mais aussi un facteur de légitimation au sein d'un environnement fortement institutionnalisé. Dès lors se pose la question de la pertinence des tarifs et des outils de gestion alimentés par ces coûts unitaires au regard des objectifs poursuivis. / Consequently to the recent implementation of NPM-inspired reforms, cost accounting plays a key role in financing and governance of French hospitals. Calculating unit costs per hospital stay is indeed the first step in the elaboration of case-based tariffs. Moreover, unit costs are used to develop new management tools aimed at improving hospital efficiency. This study compared the current cost accounting method to an innovative activity-based one for the calculation of the unit costs of 2130 surgical procedures performed consecutively at the University Hospital of Montpellier in 2009. The results show a poor agreement between both methods. In addition, the current method fails to accurately reflect the real complexity of the management of patients in the operating room. New institutionalism suggests that the development of hospital cost accounting (a formal organizational structure) results from an isomorphic process by which health care institutions internalize the rationalized myth of unit cost calculation. In order to address the constraints and the complexity of reality, a certain degree of decoupling between the accounting and real activity occurs. Hence, cost accounting would not only be an efficiency improvement tool, but also a legitimating factor within a highly institutionalized environment. This raises the issue of the relevance of the tariffs and the management tools based on these unit costs.

This master thesis "Perspectives of an Art Institution" focuses on the George Dickie's institutional theory of art (thereafter IT). This theory defines "work of art" as a result of the position of an artefact in the institutional framework of the artworld. The author of the thesis pays attention to the historical development of the IT- firstly published in 1969 in the article "Defining Art" and radically revisited in the book The Art Circle in 1984- as well as to the critical discussion based on Dickie's theory. In the first chapter she compares both the earlier and the later version of the theory; in following chapters she concerns with objections formulated against Dickie's IT. IT seems to be problematic in several aspects: the term "institution" is considered to be ambiguous; Dickie fails to give a full description of roles and rules which determine the operations of the artworld; the notion of appreciation seems to be contradictory with Dickie's opinions presented earlier; circularity; and Dickie's unsatisfactory attention to the historical dimension of the artworld. All of these objections are compared with Dickie's theory to prove their legitimacy or to refuse them as illegitimate. Not only aims the thesis to sum up the critical discussion but it aims to answer the question if the theory...

Digital platform organizations challenges the organizational landscape by utilizing technology enabling cost efficient transactions. Uber is a commonly known example of such an organization, where tensions have arisen in various local contexts due to that the organization draw their boundary tightly around the platform to the benefit of organizational efficiency. Uber has as a consequence, been highly questioned in its liability of their primary operations: Is it a technology platform, or a transportation firm?   This thesis sets out to answer:  How is the organizational boundary of Uber challenged in various local contexts? The purpose is to provide an explanation towards how the organizational boundary of a digital platform organization could be understood in relation to local context, and how it can or cannot evolve in regards to these contexts. The results show that context matters for the boundary of Uber. In addition, a pattern amongst the context specific events emerged influencing the boundary. These can be categorized into four configurations: Adjusting, Expanding, Withdrawing and Intertwining. Each of the configurations explain the underlying reasons for the varying fluctuations the boundary of Uber show, and thus answer how the organizational boundary of Uber is challenged in various local contexts.

The aim of this study was to examine how youths who have a residence permit under the law SFS 2018:756 are handled within the social services in different municipalities in order to contribute with the knowledge about how welfare organizations categorize and organize themselves around this group. The study is based on qualitative interviews with seven social workers divided in a total of six municipalities. Who either possessed knowledge of or meet our target group in their work. We have examined how they handle the needs of housing and financial aid for our target group. In our analysis of the interviews, we have applied a theoretical perspective by using the regulatory, the normative and the culture-cognitive elements of the new institutional theory and legitimacy as a concept as well as Tilly’s (2000) theory of durable inequality where key concepts are categorization and regulatory. Our understanding is that the categorization of our target group within the social services relates to stereotypical beliefs in which the youths do not receive support based on their individual needs, but are handled on the bases of their group affiliation. In the six municipalities we examined, two have been shown to stand out because they handle the youths in the same way as other unaccompanied young people. The results of our study show that there are different risks for the target group, primarily in the municipalities where they receive little support. The risks that arise are further on connected to what the conditions stipulates in the law SFS 2018:756 and partly the consequence of being unaccompanied without social support.