How can we operationalize everyday organizational practices?

Speaker(s):

Iikka Meriläinen, University of Oulu

Abstract:

Why do organizational practices matter? Why should we be interested in their similarities? When stakeholders perceive another organization’s practices as similar to their own, research on homophily suggests those organizations are more likely to associate with each other. These interorganizational dyads constitute proxies for organizational legitimacy. To examine this pathway rigorously, one must be able to operationalize everyday organizational practices, preferably without reducing them to thin “variables”. Drawing on practice theories, we treat a practice as a patterned constellation of doings, sayings, rules, emotions and material arrangements that cannot be decomposed into single elements. We consider an organization’s practice configuration as an evolving pattern of presence, absence and salience of these elements across time, and acknowledge that different audiences may perceive these configurations differently. The session will 1) co‑define “everyday organizational practice” in plain language, 2) shortlist traceable proxies for perceived similarity (e.g., documents, routines, artefacts), and 3) draft a pilot comparative research design to test the link between perceived similarity, tie formation and organizational legitimacy. The goal is a portable, interdisciplinary methodology for studying how practice perceptions influence interorganizational tie formation and organizational legitimacy.