Variation in Institutional Pressures and Organizational Responses to Pluralism

The aim of this paper is to develop a model of organizational responses to pluralism derived from selective coupling. We predict that, in fields characterized by competing logics, the adoption of logic’s stipulations depends on their centrality with respect to both logics. Central stipulations to one logic and peripheral to the other one are adopted, while, when stipulations are central to both logics, blending and compromising is expected. Similarly, stronger compliance pressures from one logic lead to increasing adoption of central stipulations to that logic, but not of peripheral stipulations in conflict with the competing logic. We test quantitatively these hypotheses on 26 universities in eight European countries, which are subject to different managerial pressures due to national policies. While confirming our hypotheses, these results extend previous work in three directions. First, we show that the distinction between core and peripheral stipulation of logics plays a central role in determining re...