Institutionalization in The Context of Institutional Pluralism: Politics As A Generative Process

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2013
OSS34110.1177/0170840612464755Organization StudiesYu
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Organization Studies
Institutionalization in the Context 34(1) 105–131

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as a Generative Process DOI: 10.1177/0170840612464755

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Kyoung-Hee Yu
University of New South Wales, Australia
Abstract
Institutionalizing a new organizational template in a pluralistic environment where multiple institutional logics
coexist entails unique challenges where actors must negotiate conflict and carry out integrative and adaptive
work. This paper examines how organizational actors in a large service sector trade union managed to
craft integrative processes out of contentious processes in institutionalizing a new organizational template.
Recently, renewed attention has focused on politics as a means through which integration is achieved
in organizations under multiple institutional pressures. However, we know relatively little about how
politics achieves organizational integration in pluralistic contexts. This paper sheds light on how successful
institutionalization processes actually unfold in organizations. While extant literature on intra-organizational
political processes has depicted politics mainly as a zero-sum game, findings in this study suggest that politics
can be a generative process through which organizations adapt to changing conditions.
Keywords
institutionalization, institutional pluralism, negotiated order, organizational politics
Organizations increasingly find themselves in environments where conflicting institutional logics

influence their mandate (Pache & Santos, 2010). Trade unions, healthcare organizations, public
schools and not-for-profit organizations are under pressure not only to fulfil social objectives but
to do so efficiently. Institutionalizing a new organizational template in a pluralistic environment
where multiple institutional logics coexist entails unique challenges that require actors to negotiate
conflict and carry out integrative and adaptive work (Kraatz, 2009). Scholars agree that, unlike
institutionalization processes in environments where a single institutional logic dominates and
exerts isomorphic influences, institutionalizing new organizational templates in pluralistic envi-
ronments necessitates political action. This paper examines how organizational actors in a large
service sector union managed to craft integrative processes out of contentious processes in institu-
tionalizing a new organizational template.
Corresponding author:
Kyoung-Hee Yu, Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales, Kensington, New South Wales 2052,
Australia
Email: khyu@unsw.edu.au
Downloaded from oss.sagepub.com at UCSF LIBRARY & CKM on February 25, 2015
106 Organization Studies 34(1)
Since Elsbach and Sutton (1992, p. 700) proclaimed that ‘Institutional theory provides a useful
but incomplete view of how organizations cope with conflicting, inconsistent demands,’ significant
advances have been made in our understanding of organizational responses to multiple institutional
pressures (Greenwood, Raynard, Kodeih, Micelotta, & Lounsbury, 2011; Kraatz & Block, 2008;
Pache & Santos, 2010). Managing an organization where actors bear allegiances to different insti-
tutional logics in the environment presents a formidable task (Kraatz & Block, 2008, p. 255).
Scholars have warned of paralysis or even organizational failure, particularly in situations where
conflicting groups are equally powerful and where institutional logics influence perceptions about
organizational goals (Pache & Santos, 2010). Unlike conventional assumptions about institution-
alization involving routinized reciprocal interaction and taken-for-granted scripts, scholars such as
Kraatz (2009, p. 70) have pointed out that institutionalization under pluralism will require organi-
zational actors to carry out integrative, adaptive and developmental work. Recently, renewed atten-
tion has focused on politics as a means through which integration is achieved in organizations
under multiple institutional pressures (Greenwood et al., 2011; Kraatz & Block, 2008; Stryker,
2000). However, we know relatively little about how politics achieves organizational integration in
pluralistic contexts. Based on historical data from an American trade union, I show how negotiated
settlements between opposing groups that varied in nature and over time helped stabilize the organ-
ization and institutionalized a new organizational template based on a social movement logic.
Proponents’ stance in intra-organizational politics became stronger as field-level acceptance of the
new organizational template grew. The findings from this study address a recent call for research-
ing ‘why structures and practices are made to appear legitimate or how elements of the broader
social environment become manifest and elaborated inside organizations’ (Suddaby, Elsbach,
Greenwood, Meyer, & Zilber, 2010, p. 1234). This paper sheds light on a hitherto poorly under-
stood question – how successful institutionalization processes actually unfold in organizations.
While extant literature on intra-organizational political processes has depicted politics mainly as a
zero-sum game, the present findings contribute to re-conceptualizing politics as a generative pro-
cess through which organizations adapt to changing conditions.
Organizational Responses to Institutional Pluralism

Institutional pluralism is defined as the presence of more than one dominating logic in the envi-
ronment, generating multiple institutionally given identities and mythologies that legitimate
organizations (Kraatz & Block, 2008, p. 244). I define institutional logics as practices, beliefs
and rules guiding an institutional order and providing actors with vocabularies of motive and
sense of self (Friedland & Alford, 1991; Thornton & Ocasio, 2008). These logics are available
to individuals, groups and organizations to further elaborate and use to their own advantage
(Thornton & Ocasio, 2008, p. 101). Hence, logics are ‘embodied in practices, sustained and
reproduced by cultural assumptions, and political struggles’ (Thornton & Ocasio, 2008, p. 101).
Pluralism can generate incompatible prescriptions for organizational action (Greenwood et al.,
2011), as well as competition among groups that profess allegiances to different institutional
logics (Kraatz & Block, 2008; Marquis & Lounsbury, 2007). At the level of the organizational
field contradictions between logics have been considered transitional, typically resulting in
‘shifts’ produced by one dominant logic replacing another (Dunn & Jones, 2010). Recently,
however, it has been suggested that multiple institutional pressures on organizations may be a
more lasting phenomenon: globalization and technological change have made it increasingly
important for organizations to combine social objectives with efficiency imperatives, for exam-
ple (O’Mahony & Bechky, 2008).
Yu 107
A growing stream of research has addressed how organizations respond to institutional pluralism.
An organization’s response to multiple institutional pressures is crucial for establishing legitimacy
vis-a-vis internal and external stakeholders, in turn affecting access to resources, and even
organizational survival (Greenwood et al., 2011). Contrary to theoretical assumptions at the field
level, studies at the organizational level have found the coexistence of contrasting logics to be
enduring. This has been shown to be especially true in sectors such as healthcare, education and
public services where organizations pursue multiple goals and where different occupational groups
work side by side. Crafting integrative processes out of contentious processes is essential, since
‘The pluralistic organization does not automatically hold itself together’ (Kraatz & Block, 2008,
p. 263). Challenges include establishing legitimacy with multiple social systems, dealing with
internal conflict in decision making, and managing the tension between being committed to organi-
zational history and being responsive to environmental pressures (Kraatz & Block, 2008). Thus,
organizational actors operating in pluralistic environments cannot merely enact taken-for-granted
scripts and are compelled to exercise choice (Kraatz, 2009; Pache & Santos, 2010, p. 461; Seo &
Creed, 2002).
Increasingly, scholars have been concerned with the construction of organizational identity as
a way of dealing with institutional complexity (Pratt & Foreman, 2000; Rao, Monin, & Durand,
2003). But the question of how organizations construct integrated organizational identities amid
institutional pluralism is still not adequately understood (Greenwood et al., 2011, p. 352) as empir-
ical studies have been rare. One exception is Battilana and Dorado (2010), who found that suc-
cessful integration was brought about when members were strongly socialized into an organizational
identity that blended contrasting institutional logics. However, the organization studied by
Battilana and Dorado (2010) relied on the recruitment of employees with no prior work experi-
ence, which is less feasible for established organizations in highly institutionalized fields. Scholars
have increasingly turned their attention to the importance of political action in managing multiple
institutional pressures (Greenwood et al., 2011; Kraatz & Block, 2008; Pache & Santos, 2010).
Group contests for status and power are a key mechanism by which actors enact institutional log-
ics (Thornton & Ocasio, 2008), and become especially salient in pluralistic conditions (Greenwood
et al., 2011). Studies have shown that the adoption of new organizational templates affects the
balance of power, personal commitments and professional obligations of organizational actors
(Binder, 2007; Gouldner, 1954; Hallett & Ventresca, 2006). Kraatz and Block (2008, pp. 261–2)
cite politics as the means by which organizations develop as a ‘self’ (Selznick, 1957), but note that
research has not examined political processes in such a light, stating that ‘the examination of such
integrative processes poses a particularly important opportunity for future research’. Thus, the
research question pursued here is: How do organizational actors construct integrated organiza-
tional identities in institutionalizing new templates under pluralism? The paper aims to contribute
to understanding the ‘intra-organizational conflict and strategic work involved in building, sus-
taining and changing institutions’ (Kraatz, Ventresca, & Deng, 2010, p. 1522) by constructing a
process-based model of intra-organizational institutionalization in the face of multiple institu-
tional pressures.
Institutional Analysis of Intra-Organizational Politics

Friedland and Alford (1991, p. 256) early on reclaimed the importance of politics in institutional
theory by stating that ‘Institutional contradictions are the bases of the most important political
conflicts in our society; it is through these politics that the institutional structure of society is trans-
formed.’ Scholars recently have begun to theorize organizational politics as a dynamic link to
broader political processes at the institutional level (Kraatz & Block, 2008; Stryker, 2000). In
Stryker’s (2000, p. 180) words, ‘organizational politics is key to how an organization’s internal and
external environment interrelate because organizational politics reflect and shape what new
institutionalists call institutional politics’. Such a perspective of organizational politics intricately
connects it to strategies of legitimation and digresses sharply from traditional conceptualizations
of organizational politics as a mobilization of resources and power (Hickson, 1986; Pettigrew,
1973; Pfeffer, 1981; Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978). Hitherto, interests, rather than values and percep-
tions, have been theorized as the driving force for politics (Hardy & Clegg, 2006, p. 738).
Consequently, organizational politics has often been construed as the act of subjugating opposing
forces through the use of power (Pfeffer, 1981, p. 71).
By contrast, scholars studying organizational responses to pluralism have recognized that
organizational politics must engage in legitimating new institutional logics: ‘When one set of
taken-for-granted beliefs confronts an alternative one, “legitimacy politics” are likely to ensue
within the organization’ (Kraatz & Block, 2008, p. 254). Contrary to neo-institutional theory’s
emphasis on cultural and cognitive mechanisms of governance (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991;
Friedland & Alford, 1991), scholars have argued that legitimation politics in pluralistic condi-
tions must involve the use of organizational rules and structures (Kraatz & Block, 2008, p. 254).
Although studies have shown that actors engage in rhetorical strategies of legitimation to endorse
new organizational templates (Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005), virtually no empirical study has
shown how organizational rules and structures are utilized to institutionalize new organizational
templates.
Recent efforts to conceptualize organizational arrangements under multiple institutional pres-
sures have focused on interactional outcomes. In particular, the concept of negotiated orders,
defined as localized social orders established through dynamic interaction among actors, has been
borrowed from the tradition of symbolic interactionism (Hallett & Ventresca, 2006; Strauss, 1978).
It is presumed that institutional logics are translated into organizational practices and rules through
the competitive interaction of groups that carry contending logics (Bechky, 2006; Kaghan &
Lounsbury, 2011; Nelsen & Barley, 1997). However, little is known about how group contests
construct negotiated orders and what propels settlements to change over time. Moreover, despite
scholarship in institutional logics explicitly acknowledging that actors are embedded in local and
extra-local institutions (Hallett & Ventresca, 2006; Kaghan & Lounsbury, 2011, p. 74; Kraatz &
Block, 2008), how organizational processes of social order construction are linked with dynamics
at the field level has been under-theorized.
Institutional Logics in the Service Employees International Union

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) was founded in 1921 as a loose network of
occupational unions that represented residential janitors and workers in other low-wage service
occupations. In its early history the union struggled financially and had little power over
employers (Beadling, Cooper, & Palladino, 1984). For several decades the union manifested a
decentralized structure where local unions were highly autonomous (Piore, 1994). The rapid
expansion of the union into two relatively new sectors, healthcare and public services, and the
influx of labour activists from these sectors ushered in a period of innovation in the union
beginning in the 1960s. In the 1980s the SEIU was one of the first unions to adopt social move-
ment practices, which triggered large-scale organizational change in the ensuing years
(Manheim, 2001). Changes brought on by the adoption of a social movement logic met with
strong internal resistance.
Yu 109
Starting from the late 1970s until the late 1990s two institutional logics – that of occupations
and that of social movements – coexisted and conflicted in the union. The eventual institutionaliza-
tion of a new organizational template, a ‘social movement unionism’ (SMU) template, in effect
also institutionalized elements of a bureaucratic logic. Thus, the resulting organizational form
mixed social movement and bureaucratic logics.
The occupational logic in unions dates back to the medieval guilds. In the United States, unions
operating under the occupational logic have been found as early as the 1700s (Commons, 1921).
Occupational unions seek work control, often monopolizing the supply of labour through hiring
halls and enforcing craft standards as gate-keeping mechanisms (Weber, 1963). These unions see
themselves foremost as an occupational community. Their primary focus of attention is on repre-
senting union members, which they see as crucial to growing and maintaining order in the occupa-
tional community. Organizing of new members is carried out conservatively and undertaken within
statutory organizing methods prescribed by American labour laws. Occupational unions are known
for local self-governance and bottom-up decision making. Historically, unions in the craft occupa-
tions have adopted the occupational logic, as in the case of the Carpenters, a builder and construc-
tion workers’ union, and the Teamsters, a union representing long-haul drivers.
A social movement logic existed earlier in the history of American unionism but has recently
been revived by reformist unions such as the SEIU (Fantasia & Stepan-Norris, 2004). Unions
adopting the social movement logic see themselves as vehicles for social justice (Fantasia & Voss,
2004; Manheim, 2001). They aim to create movement-like momentum across entire markets and
to gather power within whole industries (Fantasia & Voss, 2004). In contrast to the local self-gov-
ernance of occupational unions, unions adopting the social movement logic are governed through
campaign networks. The overwhelming priority in these unions is organizing new members rather
than representing existing ones, as organizing is seen as a means of changing the power structure
between workers and employers. Compared to occupational unions which operate within the estab-
lished institutional framework of industrial relations, social movement unions favour the use of
extra-institutional resources, such as public protest (Chun, 2005). Typically social movement
unions can be found among low-wage service workers, such as janitorial workers, represented by
the SEIU, and hotel and restaurant workers, represented by UNITE-HERE. Table 1 compares the
two institutional logics in their ideal typical forms according to their mission, organizational iden-
tity, focus of attention, and governance and decision-making structures (Thornton, 2002; Thornton,
Jones, & Kury, 2005). In the rest of the paper I distinguish between the ‘social movement logic’ as
an institutional logic and ‘social movement unionism (SMU)’ as the actual organizational form
(Greenwood & Hinings, 1993) that SEIU developed as the social movement logic was institution-
alized within it. SMU therefore includes concrete practices, rules and structures that embodied the
institutional logic (Table 1).
As mentioned, in later phases the SEIU also institutionalized elements of the bureaucratic logic
of unionism, particularly top-down decision-making processes and centralized governance struc-
tures. The bureaucratic logic has been associated with the vast majority of American unions histori-
cally; however, it had thus far not characterized the SEIU (Piore, 1994). The bureaucratic union
aims for job control, typically at the level of the enterprise. It sees itself primarily as a vehicle for
workers’ economic advancement, shunning involvement in political or social causes. Bureaucratic
unions are associated with top-down decision-making structures and governance through a central-
ized federation. In the course of adopting the SMU template, the SEIU moved from periphery to
centre of the labour movement. The labour movement is a mature and stable field, with a central-
ized structure embodied by the AFL-CIO, a national federation. Labour laws and well-established
institutions of collective bargaining govern union operations (Barbash, 1984). The introduction of
Table 1. Competing institutional logics in the labour movement
Occupational logic Social movement logic

Mission Work control Social change
Organizational identity Union as occupational community Union as vehicle for social change
Organizing field Occupation Industry
Focus of attention Representation of existing members Organizing of non-members
Strategy for organizing Organize within geographic Organize across geographic
boundaries boundaries
Decision-making process Bottom-up Bottom-up
Governance Local self-governance Campaign networks
Typical context Services (craft occupations) Services (low-wage occupations)
the social movement logic revealed limitations in existing institutional arrangements and caused
rapid institutional change in this field (Fantasia & Voss, 2004), culminating in the secession of
seven unions from the AFL-CIO in 2005. The SEIU played a key role in disseminating the new
template and legitimizing it within the labour movement and among its stakeholders. It was the
unmistakable leader of the secessionist movement out of the AFL-CIO and the creation of an alter-
native federation whose members adhered to the social movement logic (Fletcher & Gapasin,
2008). As of 2011, the SEIU is the second-largest union in the US, with 2.1 million members.
Campaigns of the SEIU, such as Justice for Janitors, have become iconic emblems of how the
social movement logic has revived unionization, galvanized coalitions between labour and com-
munity groups, and built linkages with overseas labour movements (Erickson, Fisk, Milkman,
Mitchell, & Wong, 2002).
Internally, SEIU is governed as a federated association of local unions that delegate authority
and pay dues to the national union. The top governing body of the union is the International
Executive Board (IEB), convened every four years to ratify key organizational decisions.1 Each
local union has its own Executive Board, representatives from which sit on the IEB. The day-to-
day operation of both the national and local unions is performed by elected executives and staff.
The SEIU is known for the quality of its staff (Piore, 1994), who are salaried and typically work
full-time. Members of the union pay monthly dues to the union and benefit from the services and
legal protection that the union provides.
Method
Case studies are suited for theory-building on institutional and organizational change because they
involve concepts – such as power, interests and conflict – that are difficult to measure, typically
take place over a period of time, and are products of iterative processes (Greenwood & Hinings,
1996, p. 1047). The selection of the SEIU and the labour movement to study intra-organizational
processes of institutionalization in the face of multiple institutional pressures has several advan-
tages. Unionization has declined for decades and, since the 1980s, the crisis in existing labour
institutions has challenged institutional logics and revived dormant logics in the American labour
movement (Fantasia & Voss, 2004; Manheim, 2001). SEIU as a case provides a rare instance where
a new template was successfully institutionalized despite opposition from a powerful and commit-
ted group (Pache & Santos, 2010). Furthermore, the SEIU’s role as an institutional entrepreneur in
Yu 111
spearheading the social movement logic has been well documented (Clawson, 2003; Manheim,
2001), allowing the researcher to connect field-level and organizational-level institutionalization
processes.
Data collection
Four types of data were inspected as part of this study: archival documents, field observations,
interviews, and secondary material on the SEIU and the American labour movement. The primary
source of historical data came from various collections of the SEIU official archives housed at the
Wayne State University, including the Executive Office, the Executive Board, the SEIU
Conventions, the Research Department and the Organizing Department collections. Documents
available included meeting minutes, internal memoranda, communications between national and
local unions, strategic plans, and internal and external reports. Archival data reviewed included
records from the early 1980s when SEIU adopted SMU practices up to the latest year that archival
data was available, 2000. This data was analysed for the intra-organizational dynamics of adopting
and institutionalizing the social movement logic.
Field observations and interviews were conducted between 2005 and 2007. These data were
interpreted to understand ‘later stage institutional change’ during which stable arrangements
emerged from previously chaotic inter-group contestations (Seo & Creed 2002, p. 243). Data for
this period consisted of observations and interviews conducted as part of a dissertation project. Six
full-time months equivalent observations were carried out in four local unions (Boston, Houston,
Los Angeles and Washington D.C.) of the SEIU’s building services sector and at the national union
in Washington D.C. Events observed included meetings, protests, social events and informal gath-
erings. In each local union the author’s research was approved by the relevant authority, usually the
president. The author also spent long hours on the road with staff and members of the union, during
which informal conversations proved valuable in calibrating interview and observational data. Of
162 total interviews completed for the dissertation project, 26 were analysed in full for this paper.
These 26 interviews were conducted with individuals who had been with the union since before
1995 and had, to various degrees, participated in the change process. They focused on understand-
ing the role that each participant played in organizational change and his or her motivations. The
rest of the interviews were culled – only the parts of the interviews that contained interviewees’
views of the union, its work and its position within the labour movement were analysed. Most
interviews were tape-recorded; in the few cases where interviewees preferred it, hand-written notes
were taken and transcribed within 24 hours.
Finally, secondary material on the SEIU and the American labour movement were examined in
order to assess field-level institutionalization of the social movement logic. In addition to overall
scholarly work in this area, key articles in a leading practitioner journal in the American labour
movement, the New Labor Forum, and a newspaper with balanced coverage of the labour move-
ment, the New York Times, were examined. Articles that matched the search for keywords ‘social
movement union’ and ‘SEIU’ between 1980 and 2007 were included.
Data analysis
Due to the variety of data, multiple analytical steps were carried out. As a first step, temporal
bracketing (Langley, 1999) was employed in order to understand the phases of change and the cor-
responding processes of institutionalization. Subsequently, content analysis was administered on
data depicting political actions and settlements of group contestations.
Process data include events and developments that unfold at different rates, often overlap with
each other, and sometimes do not have a fixed ending (Langley, 1999, pp. 692–3). Temporal bracket-
ing, or the separating of longitudinal process data into analytically identifiable, mutually dependent
phases, has been recommended (Langley, 1999) and effectively used to analyse intra-organizational
change (e.g. Fox-Wolfgramm, Boal, & Hunt, 1998). Temporal bracketing was used here to analyse
similarities and differences in processes of institutionalization across historical phases in the union.
Focus was placed on identifying ‘disruptive events’ (Hoffman, 1999), such as political battles and
introduction of new rules, practices and structures, and organizational actors’ reactions to these
events. Two distinct phases were identified from archival data. The first phase demarcated a period of
‘radical’ change in the SEIU that brought about breaks with earlier practices and structures
(Greenwood & Hinings, 1993, 1996), and lasted from the early 1980s to the early 1990s. Following
initial adoption, a latter phase lasting from the early 1990s to the early 2000s saw more incremental
changes and the construction of a unified organizational identity (Table 2).
Data on political actions conducted by groups in the union were coded in sequence (Miles &
Huberman, 1994). First-order themes (Van Maanen, 1979) were identified, typically comprising
Table 2. Timeline of events during institutionalization
Chronology Nature of change Intra-organizational events Field-level events

1970s Pre-change Union hires activists De-unionization accelerates
from outside who begin in building services. Union
experimenting with SMU remains in the periphery
practices of the field but attracts
affiliations from public services
employees associations
1980s Radical change National union adopts industry SEIU forms alliances with
division structure religious, anti-poverty and
Local unions host campaigns community organizations. It
sponsored by national union. expands its reach in state and
Conflict ensues between local national level politics
staff and national staff
Elected local union executives
are deposed from the helm
of important local unions for
oppositional activities
Late 1980s–2000 Incremental 1992: Industry structure Union gains affiliations of
change is ratified as principle for two other powerful unions
restructuring local unions in healthcare. Experiences
largest membership gain in
its history
Mergers between local 1995: Former SEIU President
unions result in ‘mega locals’. John Sweeney accedes to
Representative structures are AFL CIO Presidency. Start
reduced as a whole of SEIU’s leadership in labor
movement
2005–2007 Institutionalized Organizing campaigns become 2005: SEIU leads seven
state routinized; union expands into unions in a secession from
the South AFL CIO; founds Change to
2000: Taxation by national Win
union is further increased to Union expands global
strengthen strategic campaigns partnerships
Yu 113
phrases that described specific actions and reactions, or common dialogical patterns among the
actors. This was followed by axial coding where the relationships between coded items were iden-
tified and labelled as second-order themes (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Second-order themes
explained what first-order themes meant or clarified the purpose behind certain actions. Finally, I
clustered second-order themes into aggregate dimensions of political actions that could be used for
theory-building. The data structure (Corley & Gioia, 2004) for political actions taken by propo-
nents of the social movement logic is presented as Figure 1 and that for political actions undertaken
by opponents is presented as Figure 2.
Two types of outcomes were analysed. Differences and similarities in the nature of inter-group
contestations for status and power across the temporal phases were coded and interpreted as an
outcome of institutionalization processes. Following Hallett and Ventresca’s (2006) definition of
‘negotiated social orders’ as couplings of formal organizational practices with one or more of the
competing institutional logics, I determined inter-group settlements in each phase by the extent to
which organizational practices were coupled with either the occupational logic or the social move-
ment logic in the initial phase, and in later phases, with the logic of bureaucracy.
In order to build a process model of institutionalization from a multi-level perspective (Thornton
& Ocasio, 2008, p. 106), I connected intra-organizational developments with field-level dynamics
for each phase. Two key developments were followed at the level of the American labour move-
ment: the legitimacy of the social movement logic as measured by the rate of its adoption by indi-
vidual unions and by national federations for labour, and the SEIU’s own standing in the labour
movement.
Institutionalization of the Social Movement Union Template

Groups in the SEIU and institutional logics
Three relevant groups in the union became apparent during the author’s fieldwork and were later
confirmed in archival data. The groups’ different backgrounds, task areas and connections to exter-
nal communities meant that they espoused clearly distinguishable interests and commitments to
occupational and social movement logics. Although differences existed in the scope of authority
and range of political actions taken by top executives and national staff, I grouped them together
as ‘proponents’ for the purposes of theorizing political action. Their political actions are presented
in Figure 1. Local staff held allegiances to the occupational union logic and opposed the social
movement logic, at least up until the 1990s. The political actions they undertook as opponents are
presented in Figure 2. The three groups’ respective allegiances with the available institutional logics,
and their interests and backgrounds are explained below.
Top executives oversaw operations in all three sectors of the union – building services, health-
care and public services. They typically started out as union members but quickly climbed the
administrative ranks of the union. Due to SEIU’s legacy of decentralized governance, top execu-
tives have always enjoyed a large discretion that allowed them to focus on strategic initiatives
(Piore, 1994). Top executives were not only acutely aware of the threat that de-unionization
presented the union, but also of the opportunities that the social movement logic provided for
external legitimacy and growth. Top executives orchestrated overall organizational change
needed to implement the SMU template. However, their relationship to the social movement
logic appeared to be relatively instrumental. They often only actioned key decisions at the more
impassioned behest of national staff.
In the 1970s and 1980s the SEIU increased outside recruitment of national staff experienced
in labour, community and student activism. These new staff were hired as organizers and given
liberty in experimenting with new practices. These staff tended to harbour impatience with
existing organizing practices which they believed were recipes for failure – they heavily
favoured strategic corporate campaigns following the social movement logic (Manheim, 2001).
National staff identified both with organizing as an occupational identity and with SMU as a
vision for the SEIU.
Together, top executives and national staff as proponents utilized the union’s democratic pro-
cess to change practices and rules, theorized the historical imperativeness of SMU, legitimized it
in terms of organizational survival, infused new rules and structures with values, and, at later stages
of change, edited organizational history to remove traces of intense conflict (see Figure 1 and
detailed explanation in the following section).
Staff in local unions believed that de-unionization occurred as a result of forces outside their
control and not as a result of their actions or lack thereof. As a group they had vested interests
First-order concepts Second-order themes Aggregate dimensions
‘We have had to contend with and try to overcome hostility, distrust, Group interactions and
and apathy from the local union.’ conflict
‘The president of [Local A] stood up at a luncheon, that we were paying
for, and accused us of blowing the campaign.’
‘I am going to get you out of this [campaign].’
Politicizing to
‘If we are truly to change the lives of our members then we need to Lobbying top executives advance SMU
pass this resolution.’ for resources and control
Appeals to top executives and executive boards to ‘solve these serious to implement SMU
problems.’
‘There must be a re-organization of Local Union A.’
‘We keep on getting called in to clean up the same problem.’
‘The test for deciding if a local has a good administration system can Designing rewards and
first be centered on the interaction a local has with the International sanctions
Union’s offices.
‘Local Union B must be audited for breach of the union constitution.’
‘The trade unionism we grew up with is under siege and in need of Invoking urgency and
refurbishment or replacement.’ historical imperativeness
‘If we are not to do this I cannot honestly recommend that we will have
any success in commercial organizing.’
We need locals who ‘choose to turn the tide, not die of self-inflicted
wounds’. Theorizing and
legitimizing
‘We have added scores of new locals… these changes come at a time Justification of new
of growing political instability.’ structures and rules for a
We need an industrial structure to create ‘an organizational identity unified identity
which rings true for our wide range of members.’
‘Communality of purpose will naturally require… a central point of
coordination.’
‘Local leaders see the national union as complex and sometimes
confused.’
‘When I go out there and I see the workers, it could be my Aunt or my Infusing structures and
Mom, their livelihood.’ practices with values
‘The union exists to organize the unorganized and not for staff.’
What the union is doing is ‘as good as it gets in America’. Constructing
‘One Union with Many Faces.’ organizational
identity
‘SEIU is the shining star in the civil disobedience world.’ Bureaucratic logic
‘I really wanted to work with low wage workers. I wanted to work with overlooked in favor of
immigrant workers. To me, it’s a really exciting model.’ SMU logic
‘I think I wouldn’t have stayed if this were just about dealing with the
agencies. But the organizing piece is crucial.’
We are ‘Stronger together.’ Building organizational

Justice for Janitors Day is observed in all building services local unions legacy
to commemorate a watershed protest in Los Angeles by janitorial Editing
members. organizational
history
‘What’s democracy to someone who’s gone from 10 dollars an hour to Justifying past
4.75?’ organizational choices.
‘We are stronger if we are bigger.’
Figure 1. Data structure for political actions by proponents
Yu 115
First-order concepts Second-order themes
‘Why are you so insensitive to the workers’ problems and needs.’ Group interactions and
Inability of local representatives to gain control over organizing in their conflict
territory.
‘Grievances [against national staff] contain accusations of Lobbying top executives

Politicizing to retain
discrimination, extortion, conspiracy, and violations of local by-laws for control over campaigns old template
and NLRB law.’ waged in their grounds
‘We would appreciate your analysis and direction in solving these
serious problems.’
‘The most obvious and apparent discrepancy was the fact that the Protesting against
SEIU local X leadership was not involved.’ undermining/exclusion of
‘They put a bunch of SEIU officials at a table to listen, but they weren’t local knowledge
listening, they already have what they are going to do.’
Theorizing
alternative
‘The International had the money to buy everything. So they intervened Upholding values of local
and displaced all the staff that had supported us, almost 50% were self-governance and possibilities
displaced, and they only left those who supported them.’ community
‘without genuine interest of the community or people who believe in it
…, without the heart and the passion then there’s a big missing
component of it.’
‘If we are truly to change the lives of our members […] then we need to Interpreting new structures
pass and implement this resolution.’ and practices with old
‘The reality is that it also helps us organize faster, win more and win values
better rates and benefits for our members.’
‘I wanted to build the organization so that members can grow into Reframing new
leaders.’ template
Formal political resistance fades out. Acquiescence

‘We are stronger if we are bigger.’
‘I don’t mind giving up being president. It’s too bad about [the loss of]
the executive board members. But they love the union and they will
stay around.’
Figure 2. Data structure for political actions by opponents
in the relationships and structures established under occupational unionism. They thus resisted
the adoption of new structures and practices, regarding them as an intrusion on the tradition of
local autonomy and ways of doing things. They also expressed moral reservation about SMU
organizing strategies that they believed relied more on pressuring employers instead of on cul-
tivating workplace activism. As local staff lost their control over organizing, they came to
identify increasingly with representation as an occupational identity. This group’s relationship
to the social movement logic changed, however, as SMU became more institutionalized. A
combination of political purging, recruitment of activists sympathetic to the social movement
logic, and normative pressure saw this group acquiesce in new realities. In later stages of insti-
tutionalization, opponents reframed new practices and structures in terms of old values, stating,
for example, that SMU improved member representation because it increased the union’s mar-
ket power (see Figure 1).
Findings are presented for each of the three phases – radical change, incremental change and
institutionalized state – in terms of critical events at both institutional and intra-organizational
levels, political actions undertaken by organizational actors, and outcomes, which include inter-
group contestations and negotiated orders. These findings are summarized in two figures and two
tables: Table 2 shows a timeline of events, Figures 1 and 2 represent data structures for political
actions undertaken by proponents and opponents respectively, and Table 3 summarizes the chang-
ing nature of inter-group contestations and emergent social orders.
Phase I (1980s): radical change

Critical events. In the mid to late-1970s the SEIU was besieged with de-unionization in its building
services sector due to contracting out and shift and part-time work eroding the union’s base. At the
same time, the union faced new opportunities in public employment and healthcare, where limita-
tions on workers’ rights to join unions had recently been lifted. Despite its relatively low status in
the field, the SEIU was the beneficiary of many affiliations with existing employee associations,
resulting in large membership growth. The influx of new members and activists from sectors that
had started to experiment with social movement practices (Johnston, 1994) launched SEIU’s
period of radical change.
During the 1970s, the national union hired activists from outside the union who began experi-
menting with SMU practices. As these experiments resulted in ground-breaking success, they were
expanded into large-scale campaigns. In 1984 the national union underwent restructuring to adopt
‘industry divisions’. Restructuring of local unions was attempted in the 1980s but proved unsuccess-
ful due to widespread opposition. Increasing incidences of conflict between national and local staff
were reported during this phase. Political battles ensued, whereby the national union manoeuvred
local elections to depose local union executives who were opposed to reforms.
Political actions. Sources of conflict between local and national staff included differences in beliefs,
values, and status and territorial concerns. Logics espoused were perceived to be incompatible by
the actors involved. Each party sought to remedy the incompatibility by trying to ‘eliminate’ the
person in question from the task and thereby undermine the institutional logic carried by the oppo-
nent (Pache & Santos, 2010, p. 456). A memo to members of the IEB from a staff member of the
Denver local union detailed a typical interaction between local and national staff during an organ-
izing campaign:
Local union Representative (author of memo): The workers at [Company A] voted to strike
17 to 1. We are going to obtain permission
from the officers and the executive board.
National union organizer: I won’t allow you to strike.
Local union representative: And who are you?
National union organizer: Why are you so defiant?
Local union representative: Why are you so insensitive to the workers’
problems and needs?
National union organizer: I’m going to remove you from this.
Local union representative: Well, that’s up to the workers and the executive
board.
(SEIU Executive Office Collection, 9 January 1987)
Top executives actively promoted the union’s role in national affairs, for example, by participat-
ing in the AFL-CIO committees and policy advisory boards. Internally, top executives made the
final decisions pertaining to organizational change. They justified the national union’s increased
involvement in organizing both as a strategic investment as well as a measure for survival. The
national president’s report to the 1988 SEIU Convention, for example, framed reforms as the
union’s response to new threats in the environment: ‘The increasing presence of multinational
corporations with their seemingly limitless resources and professional union-busters as our oppo-
nents makes it clear that the International must take a new and vigorous role in organizing efforts’
(SEIU International Convention Collection, 1984).
Top executives justified the new industrial division structure as a ‘central point of coordination
and direction’ for strategic campaigns in each sector. As the national director of organizing
explained it, ‘Communality of purpose will naturally require agreement on the part of participating
Yu 117
locals to accept a central point of coordination and direction, the International’ (SEIU Organizing
Department collection, 22 October 1985).
National staff carried out the day-to-day activities to promote and implement the social move-
ment logic. In doing so they agitated for attention from the top and lobbied for more resources and
control. For example, a plea by a national organizer invoked the threat of widespread failure if
timely resources were not committed to an ongoing campaign in Washington D.C.: ‘If we are not
to do this [put resources into organizing campaign in Washington D.C.] I cannot honestly recom-
mend that we will have any success in commercial organizing’ (SEIU Executive Office Collection,
13 April 1987). National staff pointed to local resistance to advocate for more, not less, change.
They emphasized the futility of trying to engage and educate local union staff. Local staff were
often portrayed, as in a memo by a national organizer working on a campaign in Atlanta, as unable
to ‘come up with rational input’ and having a destructive effect on campaigns:
I have tried my best to make [president of local union A] comfortable with this campaign, especially
during this last stage. Her sporadic involvement with the campaign made it extremely difficult for me to
keep her fully informed and for her to come up with rational input concerning the campaign. … [President
of local union A] stood up at a luncheon, that the International was paying for, and in essence accused us
of blowing the campaign. (SEIU Executive Office Collection, 18 February 1990)
Subsequent memos to top executives argued that lack of cooperation from a particular local
union called for its reorganization:
In reviewing the JfJ [Justice for Janitors] organizing campaign and the ongoing work necessary to continue
organizing, enforcing our gains and building a strong union with credibility, there must be a reorganization
in [Local Union A]. Since the beginning of the organizing campaign in May we have had to contend with
and try and overcome hostility, distrust and apathy from [Local Union A] members and a confrontational
or hostile relationship with the employers. (SEIU Executive Office Collection, 31 December 1986)
Because inter-group conflict during campaigns formed the basis of judgements on the union’s
needs for new rules and structures, campaigns like the Justice for Janitors were coined as ‘most
valuable in reforming local [unions]’ (SEIU Organizing Department collection, 1990). A memo
written by a senior national staff who was deployed to diagnose the Denver local after a contentious
campaign there pronounced: ‘We need to build an entirely new Local, top to bottom – side to side!’
(SEIU Executive Office Collection, 3 February 1987).
Although relatively scarce, the archives also contained reports from local staff. Local staff
lobbied top executives to retain control over campaigns and resources and to stop the undermin-
ing of local authority. For example, one letter to the national president by a group of local staff
in Atlanta deplored national organizers’ avoidance of working with local talent:
To deny the Atlanta Local leadership to have the opportunity to have ‘direct’ input into the entire process,
clearly exhibits total disrespect and a lack of communication … By virtue of [Local Union X] leadership
being from Atlanta would give SEIU an extraordinary advantage by having people who are knowledgeable
of the surroundings and that could interact with the perspective of workers. (SEIU Executive Office
Collection, 15 February 1990)
Local staff at times vilified national staff. A group of staff and members in Denver made allega-
tions of procedural injustice, charging national organizers with ‘discrimination, extortion, con-
spiracy, and violations of [Local Union N] by-laws and NLRB law’:
Since the Executive Board decides policy and procedure from the staff, we would appreciate your analysis
and direction in solving these serious problems. These grievances contain accusations of discrimination,
extortion, conspiracy, and violations of [Local Union N] by-laws and NLRB [National Labor Relations
Board] law. Unfortunately, more grievances have been filed and will be sent to you in the near future.
(SEIU Executive Office Collection, undated)
Thus, local staff advanced an alternative theorization of possible changes in the union based on
local knowledge and due process.
Outcomes. The SMU template in this phase was implemented mostly through organizing cam-
paigns, and thus inter-group contestations revolved around control over practices. The social
movement logic was associated with successful campaigns and regained membership; hence, it
was the ascendant logic in Phase I. A gradual coupling of formal practices with the social move-
ment logic and a decoupling over time of formal practices with the occupational logic could be
observed. However, during much of Phase I, confusion and uncertainty over strategies and prac-
tices persisted, ensuing in an overlap of occupational and social movement logics. Experimental
practices created high task and role ambiguity. In a memorandum, a senior national officer sug-
gested that a socialized division between existing and newly recruited staff in local unions made
roles non-interchangeable and incurred high costs:
Each of these locals can be seen to be overstaffed in one way or another. Often, it is that there are too many
service reps for the current membership. At the same time there are new staff members hired to do
organizing. It is rare that the local has been able to convert a service rep to an organizer under the new
types of projects we help locals create. Consequently, the local faces an extremely high staff cost. I think
it is too easy for the local and the International to underestimate the costs of changing the nature of a local
union. (SEIU Organizing Department collection, 23 June 1990)
Each local union harboured uneasy truces between occupational and social movement logics, in
most cases until elections installed leaders who unambiguously supported the SMU template (Voss
& Sherman, 2000). Increasingly, national staff called on top executives for systematic changes that
would provide longer-term solutions. As one memo by a national organizer pleaded: ‘We keep get-
ting called in to clean up the same problem, and spending large amounts of local and International
money to paper over these difficulties instead of teaching how to cure them’ (SEIU Organizing
Department collection, 24 March 1987).
Table 3. Outcomes of intra-organizational institutionalization
Phases Nature of inter-group Emergent social order

contestation
Radical change Contestation over practices Social movement logic ascendant but meets
with resistance
Occupational logic slowly decoupled with
formal practices
Incremental change Contestation over rules and Social movement logic used to justify
systems introduction of bureaucratic practice and
centralized structures
Institutionalized state Tacit agreements replace Institutionalization of both social movement
overt contestation and bureaucratic logics. Organizational identity
solely recognizes social movement logic
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Phase II (late 1980s–2000): incremental change

Critical events. The SEIU experienced the largest growth in membership in its history during the
1990s (22nd SEIU International Convention Proceedings, 2000). Mergers with two powerful asso-
ciations in healthcare indicated the union’s growing status in the field. During this period the SMU
model was adopted by other service sector unions and found acceptance in the American labour
movement as a whole. The rise of John Sweeney, the former SEIU president who championed social
movement unionism, to the presidency of the AFL-CIO in 1995 formally marked the end of the
SEIU’s status as a peripheral union and the start of its leadership (Fletcher & Gapasin, 2008, pp.
128–9). A new national union president, Andy Stern, was elected from among national staff, a person
who embodied the impassioned commitment to the social movement logic characteristic of his group.
In 1992, industry structure was ratified as a principle for reorganizing local unions. Under the
motto ‘one union with many faces’, local union structures were overhauled to mimic the divisional
structure of the national union, resulting in myriad mergers that redrew the jurisdictional line
between locals. A system of rewards and sanctions, and with it a monitoring system, was intro-
duced to police implementation. Starting from the late 1990s, a second round of mergers among
local unions reduced representative structures in the union as a whole.
Political actions. Proponents worked hard to instil stability after turmoil. Unlike Phase I when coer-
cion was not uncommon in high-conflict situations, rules and systems were invoked to manage
group relationships. New rules and systems were justified in terms of the necessity to reduce dis-
crepancy in structures between national and local unions and build an organizational identity to
which members could relate. Political resistance continued to brew, particularly in those local unions
that experienced their SMU campaigns relatively late. But formal political resistance began to fade
away, not least because some local unions were placed into receivership by the national union.
In response to strong lobbying by senior national staff, top executives advocated for a restruc-
ture of local unions until the IEB ratified a resolution to that effect. The national president legiti-
mized this new initiative as a continuation of the 1984 restructuring of the national union that
promoted a unified organizational identity: ‘Just as our strength lies in our diversity, our challenge
lies in creating an organizational identity which rings true for our wide range of members. From
this challenge, the idea of industry-based divisions within SEIU was born’ (SEIU International
Convention Collection, 1988).
Top executives framed the meaning of new structures to emphasize both unity and diversity. A
memo entitled ‘Convention theme ideas’ that was circulated prior to the 1992 SEIU Convention
revealed careful deliberation around these themes: ‘In all of this we need to re-enforce the fact that
we are One Union with Many Faces. We need to weave the diverse elements of our union into one
great tapestry, celebrating the pieces and the whole’ (SEIU International Convention Collection, 5
April 1991).
National staff instigated action from top executives, theorized the necessity of ongoing change,
and designed and implemented new systems in Phase II. They prompted continued action from top
executives by invoking urgency and stressing the incompleteness of reforms. Citing risks of political
instability, they recommended that top union officers introduce deeper measures that would increase
national union control over local unions. As stated in a memorandum to the union president:
We have added scores of new locals and new local leaders, many from already existing organizations with
their own culture and way of doing things. The relationship between the International and the local has
changed substantially. Local leaders see the International as complex and sometimes confused. There are
numerous structures and sub-structures. Many of these structures overlap. … All these changes come at a
time of growing political instability. (SEIU Organizing Department collection, 22 October 1991)
National staff theorized continued reforms as an historical imperative, not just for the SEIU but
for the labour movement as a whole: ‘The trade unionism we grew up with and have come to know,
is under siege and in need of either refurbishment or replacement’ (SEIU Organizing Department
collection, 19 November 1992). Additionally, this group played a key role in designing and imple-
menting a system of rewards and sanctions. They set up procedures to monitor local unions, and
standards for determining ‘competence’:
The test for deciding whether a local has a good administration system can first be centered on the types
of information and interaction a local has with the International Union’s offices. Membership lists, timely
and accurate per capita payments, [union political activity] quotas met in full and on time, … can begin to
describe an [sic] threshold of competence that would sort out various contenders for more sustainable
awards. (SEIU Organizing Department collection, 19 November 1992)
National staff also authored manuals and training kits designed to educate and proselytize mem-
bers and staff on SMU practices. A 1992 report by the national president delineated the plethora of
manuals that came out during this period:
New educational materials produced include a completely revised SEIU Steward Kit as well as a newly
updated SEIU Steward Manual in English, Spanish, and Canadian editions. Increased emphasis is being
placed on training in administrative skills for chief executive officers, secretary-treasurers, and office
managers. Accordingly, SEIU’s administrative and financial management manual, Keeping the Record
Straight, has been completely revised. (SEIU International Convention Collection, 1988)
This period also saw national staff physically move to local unions, and many ran for elected
positions in local unions, once there. Doing so guaranteed that local unions would remain loyal to
the social movement logic.
Some local union staff continued their political resistance, but found their efforts thwarted by
candidates backed by the more resourceful national union. In an interview with the author, a former
leader of the opposition in a Los Angeles local union explained the difficulty:
They used a strategy whereby they took immediate control and the money counts a lot. We did not have
any financing, and they had it all. The International had the money to buy everything. So they intervened
and annulled everything, they diverted the attention and displaced all the staff that had supported us,
almost 50% were displaced, and they only left those who supported them. (Personal interview, member of
Los Angeles local union and former opposition leader, 2006)
Most local staff compromised by adopting SMU practices and complying with new rules.
However, in their daily practice local union staff tried to enact the occupational logic as much as
possible, for example, by promoting representation to a greater extent than organizational rules
stipulated, and narrating a vision for the union rooted in the occupational community.
Outcomes. Inter-group contestations revolved around control over rules during this phase, and
were marked by efforts to theorize and legitimize new organizational identities. Growing commit-
ment to the social movement logic was used by top executives and national staff to set in place
rules and structures that were essentially bureaucratic in nature. Local staff continued to resist such
interventions but were increasingly unsuccessful in retaining powerful positions. Thus this phase
Yu 121
saw an overlapping of the social movement and bureaucracy logics, with some decoupling of local
practices from both logics.
Phase III (2005–2007): institutionalized state

Critical events. During the 2000s and particularly after 2005, the SEIU emerged as a force to be
reckoned with, not just in the labour movement but also in progressive national politics. Already
the country’s second-biggest union with a sophisticated political apparatus, the SEIU played a
large role, for example, in organizing labour’s support for Barack Obama in 2008. In an interview
with the journal Labor, Andy Stern, SEIU’s president during 1995 to 2010, attributed these devel-
opments to having figured out ‘how to merge politics and organizing’, a central principle of the
social movement logic:
We probably thought that [the 2008] election allowed us to take the work we had done about how to merge
politics and organizing – that we had done at least in SEIU so successfully in states – and see if we could
apply it in the ultimate moment of opportunity, which was to have Barack Obama and a Democratic
Congress …. (Fink & Luff, 2011)
The union now attracted a steady stream of university-educated staff through formal channels,
such as the Organizing Institute, a union training centre (Rooks, 2004). Young aspiring activists
interviewed as part of this study considered the SEIU to be the ‘shining star’ in using innovative
protest methods. Organizing methods became standardized for the consumption of large numbers
of staff who took the validity of these methods for granted. Uncertainty over the outcome of organ-
izing campaigns was greatly reduced as employers increasingly cooperated with the union, finding
the threat of protest credible. In 2000 taxes were raised significantly on local unions in order to
boost funds for strategic organizing, which added incentives for local unions to merge, thereby
cutting administrative costs. Mergers reduced representative structures and made it more difficult
for members and staff to participate in decision-making.
Political actions. As the market share of unionized employers grew, the union sought to maintain its
power over them. Wage gains in one geographic area, for example, were difficult to sustain unless
wages increased over all markets that unionized employers operated in (Lerner, 1996). National
staff concluded that consolidating local unions to include more unionized workers in the same
bargaining unit would increase bargaining power. This belief paralleled an argument that the SEIU
was championing in the labour movement – that national unions operating in similar markets
should merge. Unlike in the previous phase, when reforms were fiercely contested, developments
in Phase III were met with little overt resistance.
Due to generational change, top executives now came from among the ranks of former national
staff. The new top executives shared with national staff an ideological commitment to the social
movement logic. Top executives drew from SEIU’s experience to theorize applications of the logic
in a broadened field of action. They mobilized like-minded unions into an alternative labour fed-
eration whose member unions committed to reinvigorate organizing. They masterminded new
campaigns, such as a campaign for increasing the accountability of private equity firms, and
exported the social movement logic overseas via ‘global union’ alliances (Aguiar & Ryan, 2009;
Lerner, 2007, p. 28).
New national staff who joined the union during the institutionalized phase were acutely aware of
the union’s status as an innovator. These staff focused on the union’s achievements rather than
its shortcomings, expressing awe at its ingenuity. Staff described working for the union as a
‘fascinating’, ‘intense’ and ‘rewarding’ experience that merited lifestyle sacrifices and, ironically,
limits on their own discretion. A senior organizer’s comment on the union’s management of its
political fund was typical: ‘Just a very, very smart way of doing it. It’s not only smart, but it’s also
legal and it’s a way in which you maximize the usage of your hard dollars’ (personal interview,
2006). For many staff, what the SEIU was doing to empower janitorial workers was ‘as good as it
gets in America’. National staff worked to create an organizational legacy of activism even as cam-
paigns became routinized. They created a ‘Justice for Janitors Day’, authored union-wide slogans
and designated the ‘SEIU color’. Protests were staged even when they were not essential for win-
ning, as explained by a director: ‘You can say that campaigns became faster after 2000, but in some
cities we still put on a fight so that people can remember what the fight was about’ (personal inter-
view, 2005).
Union documents shared with the author during this period emphasized ‘strength in unity’.
Informants were reluctant to discuss past conflict, and became visibly uncomfortable when asked
about specific incidents. Staff engaged in a process of editing organizational history, for example,
by justifying past conflict as necessary for advancing the movement. One staff’s justification of the
1995 takeover of a dissenting Los Angeles local by the national union was typical:
Look, our industry is confronted with a vicious predatory industry such as janitorial work. Men and women
can be thrown out of their jobs. … It’s like, what’s democracy to someone who’s gone from 10 dollars an
hour to 4.75 at that time. And we had the nonsense of that debate [about union democracy]. (Personal
interview, 2006)
The disparity between goals espoused by national and local staff became less significant during
the institutionalized phase. Due to replacement and turnover, local unions were staffed with people
who identified with social movement goals and supported national union initiatives even when
their own positions were downgraded due to mergers across locals. One local union president who
was thus downgraded expressed a common perspective: ‘If you ask me, this merger is a big hassle.
But I don’t mind giving up being president. It’s too bad about [the loss of] the executive board
members. But they love the union and they will stay around. We are stronger if we are bigger’
(personal interview, 2006). Ordinary members and most staff were less reflective about new devel-
opments, and many believed that larger local unions followed naturally with practising the social
movement logic. Enlarged local unions now bore the weight of resourcing most campaigns, unlike
in earlier periods when they were heavily subsidized by the national union. Dissent usually came
from more recent staff who were recruited into the SEIU from more grassroots activist organiza-
tions, and from union members who resented reduced opportunities for voice in the union. However,
rather than mobilize politically as before, dissenters I interviewed kept their disagreement within
close quarters.
Outcomes. Contrary to earlier phases marked by inter-group contests over practices and rules, the
institutionalized state was characterized by tacit agreements that reflected opponents’ perceptions
that resistance was futile and generational change among staff. The establishment of ‘mega locals’
and the implementation of standardized practices and protocols were evidence that a bureaucratic
logic with no historical precedence in the SEIU had been institutionalized. While the union did not
adopt goals of bureaucratic unionism such as job control and a narrow focus on economic issues,
it adopted its top-down decision-making and centralized governance structure. At the same time,
more than ever before, the SEIU became synonymous with SMU externally. Interviews with staff
and members revealed that staff identified solely with the social movement logic and often
Yu 123
explicitly rejected the bureaucratic logic. Statements such as ‘I really wanted to work with low
wage workers. I wanted to work with immigrant workers’ and ‘I don’t think I’m working for a
union. When I go out there and I see the workers, it could be my Aunt or my Mom, their livelihood’
suggested that the social movement logic, and not the bureaucratic logic, defined the organiza-
tional identity that had been constructed.
Discussion
This study examined the intra-organizational institutionalization of an organizational template in
the face of multiple institutional logics competing for allegiances within the organization. Figure 3
represents a process model in the SEIU in which events, political actions, inter-group contestations
and negotiated orders propelled the social movement logic to higher levels of settled states. The
findings contribute to two key literatures. The first of these is scholarship on organizational
responses to institutional pluralism. The present findings suggest that the politics required of
organizational actors in institutionalizing a new organizational template is varied and dynamic, and
include processes hitherto conceptualized as cognitive and symbolic, such as legitimizing,
constructing organizational identities and editing organizational history. This study also adds to
scholarship on organizations as political systems. Specifically, it adds to our understanding of how
politics can construct integrative organizational identities. Furthermore, it shows how field-level
institutionalization influences the nature of negotiated orders in inter-group contestations for power
and status.
Organizational responses to institutional pluralism

Although there has been considerable theorizing about how organizations adopt new templates
under multiple institutional pressures (Greenwood & Hinings, 1996; Marquis & Lounsbury,
2007; Rao et al., 2003), with the exception of a few empirical studies (Battilana & Dorado, 2010;
Binder, 2007) the institutionalization of organizational templates in the face of pluralism has been
insufficiently theorized (Kraatz & Block, 2008). In particular, although many scholars have stipu-
lated the importance of organizational politics as a means of crafting integrative processes in an
organization facing a pluralistic environment (Greenwood et al., 2011; Kraatz & Block, 2008;
Pache & Santos, 2010), how politics generates integrative outcomes has been black-boxed. The
present findings refute both an overly discursive view of institutionalization as a process of legiti-
mization as well as an overly agentic view of institutionalization as the product of exceptional
leadership.
The view of institutionalization as a legitimization process has emphasized rhetorical strate-
gies and the practice of theorizing as mechanisms for institutionalization (Lawrence, Suddaby, &
Leca, 2009; Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005; Zucker, 1991). The current study suggests that rheto-
ric is embedded in broader intra-organizational political processes. Politics encompassed a
diverse range of activities geared to uphold or thwart, and legitimate or delegitimate, the new
institutional logic. These included unequivocally political activities such as lobbying higher
authority and mobilizing resources and opinion, but also activities understood hitherto as ‘rhe-
torical strategies’ (Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005) such as theorizing, and constructing and edit-
ing organizational identity and history. Theorizing was not only carried out through discursive
methods but was firmly embedded in political processes, such as formal petitioning, manipulat-
ing attention and visibility, and discrediting and eliminating opponents from political platforms.
Likewise, organizational identity was politically constructed, through proponents’ actions that
124
Phase I Phase II Phase III

Radical change Incremental change Institutionalized state
Critical events
Fieldlevel ‘Corporate campaigns’ and alliances with SEIU rises to leadership position in labour SEIU leads unions in a secession from
social groups to combat de-unionization movement, seeks field-wide institutional national federation, founds alternative
SEIU expands reach in state and national change federation
politics
Intra-organizational National union undergoes structural Structural change of local unions Internal mergers create regional centres of
level change proceeds slowly power
Intervention of national union in local Systems of monitoring and sanctioning Standardization of practices taken-for-
campaigns are introduced grantedness
Political actions
Top executives Orchestrate organizational change Legitimate; theorize Frame organizational legacy
Disseminate template in the field
Design and implement new practices Construct new organizational identity Edit organizational history
National staff
Politicize to advance social movement
logic
Local staff Politicize against social movement logic Compromise, yet continue mobilizing Capitulate (some hold on to localized
resistance practices)
Outcomes
Inter-group Contestation over practices Contestation over rules and systems Tacit agreements replace overt
contestation contestation
Emergent social Social movement logic ascendant but Social movement logic used to justify Institutionalization of both social
order meets with resistance introduction of bureaucratic practice and movement and bureaucratic logics
Occupational logic slowly decoupled with centralized structures Organizational identity solely recognizes
formal practices social movement logic
Figure 3. Institutionalization of a new institutional template: a process model

Organization Studies 34(1)
Yu 125
silenced or muffled opponents’ attempts to frame and advance alternative realities, ratification of
events, rituals and symbols that upheld a particular organizational legacy, and careful editing of
organizational history.
Equally important, the findings challenge an overly agentic view of institutionalization in
pluralistic contexts which has maintained that the exercise of exceptional leadership is crucial
for organizations to successfully manoeuvre multiple institutional pressures (Kraatz, 2009;
Kraatz & Moore, 2002; Ocasio, 1994). Such a view echoes field-level theories that focus on
highly politically and socially adept individuals as guiding lights of institutional change
(DiMaggio, 1988; Fligstein, 2001). Findings show that top executives acted instrumentally
towards the social movement logic, and were influenced at critical points by a group with more
intense value commitments to the new institutional logic, the national staff, who lobbied for
strategies to implement SMU and designed rules and systems to buttress them. Opponents were
also critical influences in the institutionalization process, affecting the timing of key events, the
format and nature of structural changes, as well as the institutionalization of a bureaucratic logic
alongside the championed social movement logic. While actors’ resistance against dominant
institutional logics at the field level has been shown to generate new forms of professional
entrepreneurialism (Marquis & Lounsbury, 2007), the role of resistance in intra-organizational
institutionalization has been relatively understudied (one recent exception is Courpasson, Dany,
& Clegg, 2012). Furthermore, as discussed below, the focus has usually been on the threat of
intra-organizational resistance thwarting successful organizational change (Greenwood &
Hinings, 1996), while a more transformative and generative role that resistance can play has
been largely overlooked.
Organizations as political systems

This study builds on recent literature on institutional and organizational politics that has empha-
sized their generative capacities (Courpasson et al., 2012; Kraatz & Block, 2008; Stryker, 2000).
The findings expand our understanding of politics as an integrative and constructive process by
specifying the links between inter-group contestations, intra-organizational negotiated orders and
field-level developments. Additionally, the findings suggest that organizational politics may be a
mechanism for producing organizational heterogeneity at the field level.
While the negotiated order as a provisional settlement of inter-group conflict have been long
available as a concept (Bechky, 2011; Hallett & Ventresca, 2006; Strauss, 1978), the mechanisms
that transport the organization from one negotiated order to another has yet to be fully identified.
It is evident that actors’ strategies in each phase were reactions to challenges posed by the opposing
group in earlier phases. For example, in the early years of reforms, opposition was geared towards
repealing new practices, and therefore group contestations revolved around control over practices.
Having lost this battle, opponents challenged the authority structures that endorsed new practices,
and therefore the nature of contestations shifted from one over control of practices to one over
control of rules.
The findings also suggest that the range and nature of political resources available to proponents
and opponents changed over time as the social movement logic gained legitimacy within the labour
movement, and this affected the settlement that was negotiated in each phase. Although the insti-
tutional logics tradition has aimed explicitly for multi-level theorization (Thornton & Ocasio,
2008, pp. 108–9), to date our knowledge of how intra-organizational and field-level processes of
institutionalization are mutually co-constructed is limited (Suddaby et al., 2010). While it is known
that organizational actors are influenced by occupational and functional backgrounds in enacting
institutional logics (Binder, 2007; Kaghan & Lounsbury, 2011), this study suggests that actors are
also politically savvy in their enactment of logics. Political opportunities accorded by field-level
advancements in the social movement logic were seized by proponents to vanquish internal oppo-
sition and advance the institutionalization project. On the other hand, as internal opposition was
quelled and stability regained, the SEIU was able to play a more prominent role as an institutional
entrepreneur in the labour movement.
Lastly, the present findings suggest that intra-organizational negotiated orders aid our under-
standing of how organizational forms may diverge from initial templates. Settlements reflect the
logics and practices that proponents utilize in order to defeat, circumvent or compromise with
opponents, and represent interim representations of the final organizational form that is institution-
alized. In the SEIU, elements of a bureaucratic logic were layered onto the SMU template and
became part of the final form that was emulated by other unions. Political process, then, could be
a mechanism for creating organizational heterogeneity in the field, accounting for divergence from
the ideal typical template. Scholars of organizational learning have pointed out that organizations
learn differently from past experience because learning incorporates idiosyncratic biases
(Haunschild & Sullivan, 2002; Miner, Haunschild, & Schwab, 2003). Similarly, political dynamics
may introduce idiosyncratic elements to organizational form. Divergence caused by political pro-
cess, which involves layering and compromising, should be distinguished from hybridization,
which implies purposeful design (Powell, 1987; Thornton et al., 2005, p. 128). It is also distinct
from the concept of synthesis in the dialectic tradition, which draws mainly from the arguments
provided by the parties themselves. In the current study, actors were creative and resourceful in
their institutionalization project, reaching out beyond initially available institutional logics to
achieve their aim.
Conclusion
This study has examined intra-organizational politics as a mechanism in which new organiza-
tional templates are institutionalized in pluralistic settings. A contribution to the literature on
organizational responses to institutional pluralism has been to show that actors engage in a
range of political activities that were previously theorized as rhetorical, normative or cognitive
processes. This study has contributed to broadening the conceptualization of organizations as
political systems by showing how political processes affect the development and institutionali-
zation of an organizational form.
Given the research setting of the labour movement, the results of this study extend particularly
well to contexts where value commitments to institutional logics reflect personal identities as well
as career interests, such as the field of social movements and the non-profit sector. Further research
is needed to specify how political processes interact with normative and cognitive processes in the
process of institutionalization. The findings also call for a more systematic examination of whether
intra-organizational needs in the process of institutionalization produce organizational heterogene-
ity at the field level.
Acknowledgements
I thank David Courpasson and three anonymous reviewers for valuable and insightful comments that improved
the article. Any remaining errors are my own. I am grateful to staff and members of the SEIU who participated
in and encouraged this research.
Yu 127
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit
sectors.
Note
1 The SEIU represents 100,000 members in Canada and approximately 2 million workers in the United
States and Puerto Rico. To take this into account, the SEIU refers to its headquarters in Washington D.C.
as the ‘International’ union. Since this paper focuses primarily on the SEIU’s activities in the institutional
environment created by labour politics in the United States, I refer to the Washington D.C. establishment
as the ‘national union’ rather than the ‘International’. Quotes from the archives and interviews that make
reference to the ‘International’ have not been amended since there is no discernible difference in the
meaning of these two terms.
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Author biography
Kyoung-Hee Yu is a lecturer of management in the Australian School of Business, University of New South
Wales. Her research focuses on institutional and organizational changes affecting work and employment with
particular interest in political process. She received her doctorate from the Sloan School of Management,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Institutionalization in The Context of Institutional Pluralism: Politics As A Generative Process

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Institutionalization in the Context 34(1) 105­–131

of Institutional Pluralism: Politics Reprints and permission:

as a Generative Process DOI: 10.1177/0170840612464755

Organizations increasingly find themselves in environments where conflicting institutional logics

Organizational Responses to Institutional Pluralism

Institutional Analysis of Intra-Organizational Politics

Institutional Logics in the Service Employees International Union

Table 1. Competing institutional logics in the labour movement

Occupational logic Social movement logic

Table 2. Timeline of events during institutionalization

Chronology Nature of change Intra-organizational events Field-level events

Institutionalization of the Social Movement Union Template

First-order concepts Second-order themes Aggregate dimensions

We are ‘Stronger together.’ Building organizational

Figure 1. Data structure for political actions by proponents

First-order concepts Second-order themes

‘Grievances [against national staff] contain accusations of Lobbying top executives

Formal political resistance fades out. Acquiescence

Figure 2. Data structure for political actions by opponents

Phase I (1980s): radical change

Table 3. Outcomes of intra-organizational institutionalization

Phases Nature of inter-group Emergent social order

Phase II (late 1980s–2000): incremental change

Phase III (2005–2007): institutionalized state

Organizational responses to institutional pluralism

Phase I Phase II Phase III

Figure 3. Institutionalization of a new institutional template: a process model

Organizations as political systems

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Institutionalization in the Context 34(1) 105–131