Organizational Responses to Proto-Institutions: How the Semi-edited and Unedited Accounts Clash

Abstract

While adoption of institutionalized structures has received immense attention from organizational scholars, the processes associated with adoption of proto-institutions are infrequently studied. Drawing on an ethnographic longitudinal study of Producer Choice adoption by a public broadcasting organization, I contribute to the extant literature by offering three findings. First, I show how the semi-edited account of an initial implementation of proto-institution clashes with multiple unedited accounts of subsequent adoptions and results in increased ambiguity regarding the structure. Second, I shed light on how actors involved in the focal adoption struggled to follow incompatible accounts and gauge the proto-institution’s value. Last, I show how actors produce their own adoption by borrowing the justification for reform from the semi-edited account but founding its design on a previous adoption that was perceived as failed.