This study elaborates a widespread framework of organizational responses to institutional complexity. We define pluralistic field logics as necessary and competing institutional pressures as sufficient condition for institutional complexity. We also account for the circularity of organizational responses. Accordingly, organizational attributes are both a medium through which institutional complexity is filtered, and an outcome of institutional pressures. To develop our understanding of organizational responses, we chose the setting of higher education in France and Germany. After detailing the field structures and their competing logics, we introduce three longitudinal case analyses of organizational responses to institutional complexity. All three universities show hybrid responses from a cross-sectional and longitudinal perspective. We find that organizational change towards the new field-logic of managed education is partial, fragmented, still enduring.

Ko-Autor + Diskussion; Sprecher: Anne Riviere, Marie Boitier, Fabian Hattke