“Heaven or Las Vegas”: Competing institutional logics and individual experience

• Published date: 01 September 2019
• Author: Miguel Pina e Cunha,Stewart Clegg,Luca Giustiniano,Arménio Rego
• Date: 01 September 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12156

“Heaven or Las Vegas”: Competing

institutional logics and individual experience*

MIGUEL PINA E CUNHA,

1

LUCA GIUSTINIANO,

2

ARMÉNIO REGO

3

and STEWART CLEGG

4,5,6

1

Nova School of Business andEconomics, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

2

LUISS Guido Carli University, Rome, Italy

3

Católica Porto Business School, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Porto, Portugal and BRU, ISCTE-IUL, Lisbon, Portugal

4

University of Technology Sydney, Australia

5

Nova School of Business andEconomics, Lisbon, Portugal

6

Newcastle University Business School, UK

Significant research has been dedicated to the study of the dual constitutive core at the field and organizational

levels but less attention has been paid to the micro-dimensions ofthe collision of competing logics, namely in terms

of how individualsexperience and navigate through them and how that influences organizational ethos and strategy.

We studyhow one individual, founder of the organization behind the independent music label 4AD, made senseand

lived through the fundamental clash of two logics: ‘music as art’and ‘music as business’.Weanalysehowthe

personal struggles of the founder allowed the construction and maintenance of a strong, solid and continued

organizational identity for 4AD. We uncover four factors accounting for the protection of 4AD’s sustained artistic

integrity in face of a transforming industry.

Introduction

Run by mavericks with little or no business sense,

independent record labels turned the music industry

on its head in the 80s. And their sound and aesthetic

remains a huge influence to this day. (King, 2012a.

Institutional logics are ‘the organizing principles that

shape the behaviour of field participants. Because they

refer to a set of belief systems and associated practices,

they define the content and m eaning of institutions’(Reay

and Hinings, 2009: 631). The fact that organizations are

confronted with different and sometimes competing

institutional logics has attracted significant scholarly

attention (e.g., Pache and Santos, 2010). Many fields,

perhaps most, are characterized by institutional

complexity (e.g., Greenwood et al., 2011; McPherson

and Sauder, 2013; Besharov and Smith, 2014;

Baumann-Pauly et al., 2016; Bertels and Lawrence,

2016). The presence of rival logics or belief systems

creates organizational tensions and contradictions (Pache

and Santos, 2013; Hargrave and Van de Ven, 2017)

potentially enacting a ‘sense of dissonance’(Stark,

2009) for those who manage them.

Dissonance can be used as a source of innovation and

change (Jay, 2013) as well as be a powerful source of

tension at the individual level (Festinger, 1962), in terms

of ‘stress, anxiety, discomfort, or tightness in making

choices and moving forward in organizational situations’

(Putnam et al., 2016, p. 4). The theme of the competition

between logics has been approached mostly at a macro

level, that is, in fields and organizations (Pache and

Santos, 2010; Jay, 2013). Although some work has been

conducted on the agency of individuals (e.g., Battilana,

2006), how individuals experience, make sense of, and

respond to conflicting institutional logics is still in need

of further exploration (Kraatz and Block, 2008; Bishop

and Waring, 2016; Hargrave and Van de Ven, 2017). In

fact, individual experience of competing logics, as well

as how trade-offs are managed with associated emotional

demands, hasattracted relatively little attention(Good and

Michel, 2013). More needs to be known about how the

*

The title is froma masterpiece by the CocteauTwins.

DOI: 10.1111/emre.12156

©2017 European Academy of Management

European Management Review, Vol. 16, 781–, (2019)

98

7

micro-level mechanisms through which individuals,

especially leaders, deal with competing logics.

In this paper we address the literatures on institutional

logics, paradox, and identity, following cues from

researchers such as Petriglieri (2011), that identity issues

at the boundary between individuals and organizations

require further exploration. Self, social and organizational

identity can be nested and more research is necessary to

understandhow identity issues articulate levelsof analysis

(Ashkanasy et al., 2017). Organizational life, as an

intersubjective experience, is a phenomenon that is

emergent fromthe dynamic sharing of projectedemotions

between individuals in and around organizations: leaders

and followers, bosses and workers, employees and

outsiders of various kinds –customers, suppliers,

communities, etc. These emotions may be projected on

to and by various phenomena; not only human actors

but also various materialities that constitute actants in the

scenes of everyday life, particularly artefacts, whose

power ‘to communicate about organizational identity lies

in the emotional and aesthetic foundations of cultural

expression’(Hatch and Schultz, 2002, p. 1002).

The research question that organizes this paper asks:

how do individual actors navigate the contradiction

between rival institutional logics and how do they turn

contradictions into action? We provide an answer to this

question by considering how specific managers and

entrepreneurs act as decision makers in a given

institutional setting when confronted by diverse

institutional logics that define or challenge their sense of

identity, namely because they incorporate a paradoxical

component. The paper focuses on a celebrated case, in

certain circles of appreciation, of an organization whose

entrepreneurship in navigating competing institutional

logics while crafting an identity around these dynamics

had identity consequences that were both organizational

and individual. We next explain the research setting and

the methods employed to address the research question.

Our contribution, first, is to discuss and make concrete

the process of facing institutionally generated

contradiction. Second, we highlight the role of materiality

in the definition, stabilization and expression of

institutional identity. Third, we address the conceptual

dynamics of individual-organizational identity

coevolution. We begin with an account of competing

logics before moving to consideration of the organizational

actor and entrepreneur at the centre of our account.

The organizational actor

The organizational actor at the centre of our account is

4AD, an iconic name in alternative music.

1

4AD is a

British independent record label founded in 1980 by Ivo

Watts-Russell and Peter Kent, financially supported by

the Beggars Banquet group. Axis Records, started in

1979, preceded the company, but its name was changed

to 4AD (a chronology of 4AD’s defining moments is

presented in Table 1). The 4AD label was launched as a

testing laboratory for Beggars Banquet. Martin Mills of

Beggars Banquet owned the label outright until he gave

half his shares to Ivo. At the end of 1981, Kent stopped

working with Ivo at 4AD and started Situation Two.

4AD produced someof the most representative records

of indie rock music of our times. Its roster features names

such as Bauhaus, Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil,

Deerhunter, Scott Walker, St Vincent, The National, and

Pixies, to name just a few. Over the years, the label was

able to launch a unique ‘4AD sound’, an aural aesthetic

signature rendering 4AD distinct from other labels. With

this, 4AD expressed its commitment to art and answered

the primordial question faced by music entrepreneurs:

‘all the record men instinctively choose one: the music

or the money’(Murphy, 2015: xii).

Ivo Watts-Russell was cofounder of this independent

(‘indie’) music label 4AD, well recognized as one of the

‘madmen and mavericks who made independent music’

(King, 2012b). We will explore how Ivo dealt with the

inherent conflict between art and business (Mainemelis

et al., 2015) by asking how the tension between ‘music

as art’and ‘music as business’was felt and articulated at

the individual level. In so doing, we also study how a

business founder and venturer constituted different logics

over time and struggledin trying to manage them. In terms

of institutional logics, music can be perceived as art and/

or business, a tension very present at 4AD, one that is

1

The paper was triggered by two motives: a conceptual gap at the level of

individual experiences of competing logics, and a personal interest for this

particularcase. This secondmotivation can be as importantas the first (Alvesson

and Sandberg, 2011; Spisak et al., 2015): in fact, as pointed out by Kilduff

(2006: 252) ‘the route to good theory leads notthrough gaps in the literature

but throughan engagement with problemsin the world that youfind personally

interesting’.One of the authorsis a long-lasting fan of 4AD andfound this case

personallyinteresting and conceptuallyengaging.

Tab le 1 Timeline of relevant events in the life of 4AD

Date Event

1979 The Axis label,4AD’s predecessor, is created.

1980 Axis launchesfour singles in early 1980.

1980 Founded inLondon by Ivo Watts-Russelland Peter Kent.

1982 Recruits designer Vaughan Oliver.

1983 Minor US hit with“Imeltwithyou”by Modern English.

1987 M/A/R/R/Ssingle Pump Up the Volume hits No 1.

1987 Pixies sign:first American band in the label.

1990 Flagship band,Cocteau Twins, departs.

1991 Licensingagreement with Warner Bros.

1999 Ivo sells his 50% shareto Martin Mills, head of the

Beggars Banquet group.

No 1 in Altmusic’s list of the indie labels of all time.

2006 Scott Walkersigns for 4AD.

2016 Two 4AD albums makethe list of the best albums ever

by the Uncut magazine.

782 M.P. Cunha et al.

©2017 European Academy of Management