Institutional Bricolage: How Resource-Constrained Organizations Construct Hybrid Institutional Arrangements

While Kushins & Quispe-Agnoli (2023) showed how family firms use "familiness" to overcome institutional racism, and Todaro et al. (2025) examined sustainability integration in non-institutionalized contexts, we lack understanding of how organizations actively construct institutional solutions. This study would investigate "institutional bricolage" - the process by which organizations creatively assemble practices, meanings, and resources from multiple institutional logics to address complex challenges. Drawing on Wright & Wilkie's (2024) finding that institutional pressures can simultaneously encourage and stagnate change, I'd examine how organizations navigate institutional contradictions through creative combination rather than simple compliance or resistance. This extends institutional work theory by focusing on constructive rather than disruptive or defensive institutional work.

References:

1. Institutional theory and institutional racism: barriers to business success faced by POC entrepreneurs and the family firm advantage. Eric R. Kushins, Myriam Quispe-Agnoli (2023). International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research.
2. Enablers and Constraints of Environmental Sustainability Integration: A Structuration Perspective on Professional Sports Organizations. N. Todaro, Gianluca Gionfriddo, Owais Khan, T. Daddi (2025). Business Strategy and the Environment.
3. Small worlds: Institutional isomorphism and Australia’s corporate elite, 1910–2018. Claire E. F. Wright, Benjamin Wilkie (2024). Business History.