Institutional logic

Institutional logic is a core concept in sociological theory and organizational studies, and increasingly in marketing theory as well, describing how broader, socially shared belief systems shape the thinking and behavior of the people and organizations operating within a given institutional setting. Rather than treating institutions such as markets, corporations, professions, the family or religion as neutral containers for individual action, the concept treats each as carrying its own distinct organizing logic, its own taken for granted assumptions about what counts as legitimate, valuable or normal conduct, which then guides how people within that institution interpret situations and make decisions. A person or organization operating across more than one institutional field, a doctor who is also a hospital administrator, for instance, can find themselves pulled between different and sometimes conflicting institutional logics, a tension that scholars use the concept to analyze directly. Since its development, institutional logic has become one of the standard analytical tools institutional theorists use to explain why apparently similar organizations behave so differently once embedded in different institutional environments.