Institutional Logics as Identity Projects

Abstract

This study extends theory on the role of identity construction in institutionalization processes by exploring the role of everyday identity work by nonentrepreneurial actors in the reproduction and translation of new institutional logics. I analyze how management and institutional investors in the United Kingdom reworked their identity and practices in response to efforts by influential change agents to shape and control these based on the logic of shareholder value. This analysis identifies three ways in which actors, through everyday identity work, can paradoxically accommodate and resist the practice and identity implications of new institutional logics at the same time.