The Competent Actor

Abstract

Traditional institutional analysis and the conceptualization of a competent actor—an ordinary individual at times culturally disembedded and capable of proactively engaging with institutional complexity—have not made the best bedfellows so far. This is about to change. Limitations in the institutional logics perspective regarding its microfoundations are now beginning to be addressed and attention has shifted to the theorizing of actorhood. Recent work on institutional biography and reflexivity stresses the importance of agency in bringing the actor back into the debate around institutional logics or institutional orders in a broader sense. This commentary speaks to the growing research interest in actor’s “on the ground” dealing with multiple logics. The notion of the competent actor and its potential to be further developed from an institutional logics perspective together with French pragmatist sociology are discussed.

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Journal of Management Inquiry
2014, Vol. 23(3) 333 –337
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DOI: 10.1177/1056492613517467
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Dialog
Putting either more emphasis on agency or structure is like
“the chicken or the egg” question of institutional analysis.
Although Thornton, Ocasio, and Lounsbury (2012) depart
from the limited role of agency in “old” neoinstitutional the-
ory and integrate the actor as a mediator—reproducing and
transforming institutional logics (in short IL)—into their
cross-level model that is meant to serve as microfoundations
for the IL perspective, the question of how far the authors
take future research along this path remains open. Reading
through their microfoundations chapter in their seminal
book, one comes across several dichotomies: macro versus
micro, reproduction versus transformation, persistence ver-
sus change, top-down versus bottom-up, automatic versus
controlled, formal versus informal, sensemaking versus
sensegiving, and so on—each latter term suggesting the
more tricky circumstance with regard to the actor’s role. And
even though the authors discuss the enabling aspects of IL
(especially their multiplicity) being used by actors to be put
into organizational practices, their argumentation leaves
behind the impression of agency being a second-order con-
cept in contrast to the constraining leverage of social struc-
ture (Edwards, in press).
But why does “the egg” seem to be more important than
“the chicken”? The problem connects to issues regarding the
microfoundations of social sciences in general. Barney and
Felin (2013) identify several misconceptions of microfoun-
dations: (a) being viewed as psychology, human resources
(HR), micro-OB (organizational behavior) matters; (b) bor-
rowing concepts that again are too much psychology, OB,
and so on; (c) having issues with infinite regress concerning
units of analysis and on the contrary with their aggregation;
as well as (d) institutions and structures being ascribed to be
denied. In other words, accounting for human behavior from
the micro to the macro forms an obstacle. They as other
scholars before (Jepperson & Meyer, 2011) trace back these
conceptual concerns to Durkheim’s macro-methodological
standpoint that abandons the individual and “privileges
macro explanations and macro-to-macro relations, as well as
macro-to-micro links, at the expense of individual nature,
agency, and choice” (Barney & Felin, 2013, p. 139). With
regard to the IL perspective, there are recent attempts to
counter such approaches and build the individual’s active
social contribution into the construction of reality, by open-
ing the “black box” of logics working on the ground
(McPherson & Sauder, 2013), stressing the importance of
actors' social background (Suddaby, Viale, & Gendron,
2012), differentiating agents’ scope of action (e.g., Delbridge
517467JMI
XXX10.1177/1056492613517467Journal of Management InquiryPernkopf-Kon
häusner
research-article
2014
1
University of Innsbruck, Austria
Corresponding Author:
Katharina Pernkopf-Konhäusner, School of Management, University of
Innsbruck, Universitaetsstrasse 15, Innsbruck, 6020, Austria.
Email: katharina.pernkopf-konhaeusner@uibk.ac.at
The Competent Actor: Bridging
Institutional Logics and French
Pragmatist Sociology
Katharina Pernkopf-Konhäusner
1
Abstract
Traditional institutional analysis and the conceptualization of a competent actor—an ordinary individual at times culturally
disembedded and capable of proactively engaging with institutional complexity—have not made the best bedfellows so far.
This is about to change. Limitations in the institutional logics perspective regarding its microfoundations are now beginning to
be addressed and attention has shifted to the theorizing of actorhood. Recent work on institutional biography and reflexivity
stresses the importance of agency in bringing the actor back into the debate around institutional logics or institutional orders
in a broader sense. This commentary speaks to the growing research interest in actor’s “on the ground” dealing with multiple
logics. The notion of the competent actor and its potential to be further developed from an institutional logics perspective
together with French pragmatist sociology are discussed.
Keywords
institutional logics perspective, French pragmatist sociology, embedded agency, institutional biography, reflexivity, economies
of worth, the competent actor
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334 Journal of Management Inquiry 23(3)
& Edwards, 2013, from a critical realist standpoint), and thus
paving the way for bringing the actor back into the debate.
The purpose of this commentary is to jump on the band-
wagon and further challenge the emphasis on the macro by
refining the notion of the competent actor for institutional
analysis in order “to understand [ . . . ] the constituent parts
that make up [any collective phenomenon or thing]: individ-
uals and their social interaction” (Barney & Felin, 2013,
p. 139). In line with Cloutier and Langley (2013), I argue that
French pragmatist sociology (in short FPS) is useful to this
end. Bridging both perspectives may do even more justice
for the individual actor’s central role in reproducing and
transforming practices. Therefore, I first examine how IL
and FPS ponder individual agency independent from one
another and then discuss the potential to cross-fertilize each
other along implications for future research.
IL and the Competent Actor
In mainstream IL research, one finds pretty much two
extreme positions regarding the competences of actors and
their dealing with IL: (a) “transformers” who challenge
whole fields, industries, or even society by changing logics
at the competent end of the spectrum, and (b) “reproducers”
who are caught in taken-for-granted routines at the incompe-
tent end of the spectrum (Cloutier & Langley, 2013, also
point into this direction). Of course, these extreme ends are
exaggerations and notions such as institutional entrepreneur-
ship, institutional work, embedded agency, and inhabited
institutions have started to bring back individual agency into
institutional and organizational analysis (Morgan, in press).
All the more, do recent studies (Daudigeos, 2013; McPherson
& Sauder, 2013; Pache & Santos, 2013) show a tendency that
individual actors intentionally use multiple IL as tools to
reach agreements with other stakeholders or maintain legiti-
macy in a composite way to develop business. Their usage of
certain logics is not strictly tied to categories of people, for
instance, to professions (McPherson & Sauder, 2013) or
members of particular organizational types (Pache & Santos,
2013). Logics on the ground are rather pragmatically
employed to “get things done.”
McPherson and Sauder’s (2013) article on decision-making
at a drug court is somewhat exceptional, because it shifts the
focus from organization-level responses (in reaction to com-
peting multiple logics) to the application of multiple logics
on the ground. The authors study how local actors deal with
institutional complexity, being interested in case-by-case
coordination dynamics rather than stabilizing the organiza-
tional setting by maintaining legitimacy in the field. They
even conclude that “[their] work shows how the ability and
willingness of actors to draw on resources from other institu-
tional backgrounds contributes to the maintenance of the
existing organizational and institutional structures” (p. 186).
According to their own statement, they complement research
examining higher levels of analysis, therefore, providing
“only” part of the picture.
Thornton et al. (2012) address the big picture and intro-
duce an integrative model that links micro- and macro-pro-
cesses with regard to availability, accessibility, and activation
of IL through individual agency in the light of structural con-
ditions that restrict their behavior. Keeping structure and
agency rather as separate, Delbridge and Edwards (2013)
apply a critical realist approach to the typical bifurcation and
introduce a typology of “reflexives” to explain “conditioned
action”: the fractured, the communicative, the autonomous,
and the meta (Delbridge & Edwards, 2013). Their typology
highlights the potential spectrum of agency—range of
“reflexive deliberations” from the social dope to the metaphy-
sician—as a result of the personal institutional history with-
out neglecting the impact of the situational setting. They share
a more active sense of agency with Suddaby and colleagues
(2012) who point to the relevance of actors’ institutional biog-
raphy in relation to their capacity to reflect their actions.
FPS and the Competent Actor
In contrast to IL, in FPS, the “competent actor” has a very
well-defined meaning and it is a concept that occupies a cen-
tral place in the theoretical framework. Competence (lat.
competentia = the power of judgment) goes beyond authority
or skill, rather a “sense of justice” is meant (Dodier, 1993,
p. 557). Interestingly enough, the word competent (lat. cum
und lat. petere = strive together) also implies the accomplish-
ment of a common action. So competence of the actor is both
about realizing joint activities (pragmatism), but with refer-
ence to higher order moral standards (a joint action toward the
common good). In his early review of De la Justification
(Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006), Dodier (1993) highlights that
“[t]he way in which people themselves qualify, identify, inter-
pret and explain events” (p. 567) constitutes FPS’s key meth-
odological standpoint, further he stresses the importance of
“the methods that people adopt, locally, to demonstrate to
others that their actions are meaningful” (p. 567). The compe-
tence of the researcher to this end resembles the competence
of the ordinary actor (Boltanski & Thévenot, 1999).
Both in everyday and work life, actors need to grasp con-
ventional and unconventional situations. Conventional situa-
tions can be handled at ease, in a planned or justifiable
manner (Thévenot, 2007), depending on the kind of coordi-
nation mode, but in any case, actors agree on a shared under-
standing of reality and how to act together. In the mode of
justification (e.g., in public debates), actors draw from a pub-
licly known evaluative repertoire that corresponds to a mate-
rial universe that backs up their justifications. Even outside
the public arena, actors engage in continuous interpretation
or “justification work” (Jagd, 2011), question previous con-
clusions, and establish “local ordering” (Dodier, 1993,
p. 563). Unconventional situations—as I call situations that
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Pernkopf-Konhäusner 335
are figuratively strange to a newcomer—cause uncertainty. It
is not clear based on which conventions joint action is real-
ized, a need for coordination occurs. Newcomers engage in
reality tests to reduce uncertainty (Boltanski & Thévenot,
2006). Reality tests “are moments of malaise in which the
principals underpinning actors judgments and beliefs on
what is appropriate for the situation at hand are made most
visible through argumentative moves and reliance on mate-
rial proofs” (Dansou & Langley, 2012, p. 504). To do so,
actors develop a critical capacity and related competences.
Either, they remember past interactions or are informed by
coordination systems and their material objects in place (e.g.,
a manual). A third option is that actors find a new way to
handle unclear circumstances, and invent conventions (Diaz-
Bone, 2011).
Although the room to [maneuver] is strictly limited by the way
the situation is arranged, a model incorporating several worlds
gives actors the possibility of avoiding a test, of challenging a
test’s validity by taking recourse to an external principal, or even
of reversing the situation by introducing a test that is valid in a
different world. The model thus includes the possibility of a
critique for which determinist constructions fail to account.
(Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006, p. 216)
Thus, actors mobilize their critical capacity (Boltanski &
Thévenot, 1999) by contesting the worth of persons and
things, reaching (a) a clarification in one world, (b) a tempo-
rary local arrangement, or (c) a compromise (Jagd, 2011).
To sum up, actors have competences to (1) assess the situ-
ation to understand whether conventions for joint action are
certain or not. If they are, (2a) the justification repertoire is
used, (2b) plans are made to be realized, or (2c) a familiar set
of actions is followed. If they are not, (3a) a new convention
that helps coordination is created or (3b) they are free to act
without any convention through the use of violence and love,
for instance, which Boltanski and Thévenot (1999) exclude
from their conceptual focus in On Justification.
Bridging Perspectives
Boxenbaum in this dialogue makes the argument for the
added value of FPS with regard to the situated stance in insti-
tutional analysis, I discuss the potential of the notion of the
competent actor being jointly developed by both the IL and
FPS perspective. Thornton and colleagues (2012) understand
individual actors as situated, culturally embedded beings
with bounded intentionality. They contrast, their restraining
view on logics to FPS’s enabling understanding of logics
attesting “a situated intentional actor, with limited embed-
dedness” (p. 101). The degree of embeddedness of the actor
states a major difference to FPS (Diaz-Bone, in this dia-
logue), which I argue can be overcome. IL and FPS use par-
tially different wordings to explain the same phenomenon:
For instance, IL talks about social identities, goals, and
schemas being accessed and activated in a situation of a
shared focus of attention. FPS, on the contrary, speaks of
communities, goals, and coordination forms being relevant
in particular situations of common action. Both perspectives
share the understanding of (a) the availability of a finite
number of multiple IL or orders of worth in society, (b) the
actor’s important role in persistence and change, and (c) the
focus on practical coordination or conditioned action in situ.
Thornton et al.’s (2012) IL microfoundations model adds
a more elaborate view with regard to the accessibility and
activation of IL or orders (e.g., preconditions and boundaries
for the competent actor). At the same time, their model
downplays the actor’s agentic role by putting more emphasis
on the constraining aspects of theoretical concepts the
authors integrate into their framework (e.g., sensemaking
preferred to sensegiving), as Edwards (in press) notes,
“agency is treated as a second-order concept such that logics
take explanatory priority over action” (p. X). The FPS per-
spective is useful as it provides microfoundations for “how
institutions are formed, maintained and changed” (Cloutier
& Langley, 2013, p. 1), particularly by providing a concept
of the competent actor who has a cognitive and evaluative
capacity based on higher order principles of coordination
available in situations. A milestone in introducing FPS as a
useful approach to institutional analysis (especially to North
American scholars) is Cloutier and Langley’s (2013) Journal
of Management Inquiry publication. They identify important
distinctions and make suggestions where FPS fills gaps of
IL. Furthermore, the authors argue that IL studies have
already hinted toward FPS’s notion of the competent actor by
concluding that “people do have the reflexive competence to
draw on a wider range of cultural resources than simply the
specific logics under review” (p. 13). This insight is interest-
ing for two reasons: First, it “dis-embeds” the individual to
some extent from pluralistic institutional fields and their pre-
scriptions. Second, it speaks of resources that can be inter-
preted as (material) back-ups for the usage of outside-of-field
logics. This further coincides with recent moves in the IL
approach to clarify the scope for agency based on the notion
of reflexivity (Delbridge & Edwards, 2013). With regard to
the availability of plural logics Suddaby and colleagues
(2012) put forward individuals’ institutional biographies that
help actors make sense of complex situations.
The conceptual point I want to add is that actors at least
switch along two dimensions: (a) between different distinct
logics or orders and (b) beyond the mode of justification
(e.g., public debates) to more informal modes of planned
action and familiarity (Thévenot, 2007; Bullinger, in this dia-
logue). In FPS, actors’ competences are constrained by the
coordination situation, what Dodier (1993) refers to as
“structured pragmatism” (p. 564). The focus on the situation
as the object of study is foundational (Diaz-Bone, 2011).
Again recognizing the importance of contextual conditions
for explaining institutional work resonates across both
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336 Journal of Management Inquiry 23(3)
perspective, FPS’s stance corresponding with Friedland and
Alford’s (1991) nested view of individuals operating in orga-
nizations that are embedded in wider social orders.
Discussion and Future Directions
Having drawn from recent IL and early FPS literature con-
cerning notions of a competent actor, a number of shared
research interests appear. Both perspectives are interested in
actor’s competences to distance themselves from prescrip-
tions of coordination situations, operating with multiple log-
ics to maintain or disrupt arrangements or to create a new
composite.
IL increasingly fancies with a logics as a toolkit approach
(à la Swidler, 1986), whereas in FPS, evaluative repertoires
across cultures were studied already more than 10 years ago
(Lamont & Thévenot, 2000). Moreover, similarities between
institutional sensemaking (Weick) and FPS’s concept of the
test (Dansou & Langley, 2012) can be detected, FPS adding
materiality to rhetoric back-ups for agreements. A variety of
situational competences (e.g., to memorize, identify, inter-
pret, enact, criticize, qualify, explain, evaluate, justify) is
needed to be aware and able to handle multiple logics in con-
crete (test) situations. It does not help, for example, to be an
expert or a businessman, if a father figure is regarded as
appropriate quality of a person being involved in a specific
organizational practice (e.g., as a mentor in a career pro-
gram). To grow these competences (reducing cognitive limi-
tations) is not only an achievement of the individual (personal
biography) but prompted by the situation’s conditions or
tools. Finally, I read recent IL work (McPherson & Sauder,
2013; Pache & Santos, 2013) as allowing the actor to “get
things done” outside the prescribed scope, which is in line
with FPS’s pragmatic methodological stance and opens the
way to synthesize over- and undersocialized notions of the
social actor.
By further opening the “black box”—McPherson and
Sauder (2013) refer to the “workings of logics on the ground”
(p. 168)—I suggest following two directions for future
research combining insights from IL and FPS: FPS could
consider IL’s work on intentionality (e.g., identity, personal
interests, and goals), or more specific Delbridge and
Edwards’ (2013) idea to include “internal conversation”
aspects into the analysis of local orders. IL could benefit
from FPS’s view of the individual at times being disembed-
ded (e.g., inventing an entirely new convention or other
arrangement from a cognitive repertoire beyond justifica-
tions). At the moment, both approaches are attested to be
either too pragmatic or instrumental, missing individual
aspects such as the actor’s passion for doing things (Friedland,
2012). Going back to the initial question of this commentary,
I plead for “the chicken” to be treated as equally important as
“the egg”—bridging IL and FPS perspectives possibly con-
tributes to the emancipation of the competent actor.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.
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Author Biography
Katharina Pernkopf-Konhäusner is a post-doctoral researcher at
the University of Innsbruck School of Management as well as
research partner and lecturer at WU Vienna. Her dissertation from
2012 with the title “Convention Theory and the Evaluation of HR
Systems” was an attempt to approach the working of employment
relationship models, HR systems or HR functions such as training
and development from a French pragmatic sociology perspective and
examine how organizations and its members manage seemingly com-
peting institutional orders or logics in concrete coordination situa-
tions. Furthermore, she is interested in exploring new methods for
contributing to the situated stance in organizational institutionalism.
In 2014, she is SCANCOR visiting scholar at Stanford University.
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