Understanding persistence and change in corporate governance rules, structures and practices in the Situationist View of Organisations

The chapter aims at proposing a theoretical point of view on corporate governance dynamics that differs from the dominant positions, proposing an unusual path to understanding persistence and change in corporate governance rules, structures and practices, adopting the situationist view of organisations (SVO). Following this point of view, both the organisations (micro-level) and the social systems (macro-level) are qualified as concrete systems built by the actors: spaces of games, arenas of different interests and strategies and areas of interaction, negotia- tion and conflict among actors and their coalitions. The macro-level and micro-level are inextricably intertwined: the continuous work of two processes – action and insti- tutionalisation – build, break and rebuild each concrete system. One of the key concepts for understanding this never-ending dynamic is institu- tional logics, defined by Thornton and Ocasio as ‘the socially constructed, historical patterns of material practices, assumptions, values, beliefs, and rules by which indi- viduals produce and reproduce their material subsistence, organize time and space, and provide meaning to their social reality’ (Thornton and Ocasio, 1999, p. 804). When a certain institutional logic declines and changes, the actors reshape themselves and ‘the past is reinterpreted to suit the needs of the present’ (Shilo et al., 2013, p. 412). In what follows, after a brief introduction to the SVO, we will focus on the theoreti- cal framework, particularly of the processes of action and institutionalisation, and of the key concepts of institutional framework, degree of institutionalisation, rational- ised myth and institutional logics. In the last part of the chapter, we also present some reflections on methodology matters and, particularly, on the opportunity to use quali- tative research methods to better understand the complexity of institutional dynamics.