Public Lecture – All welcome
Time: Thursday 9th September, 1.15pm UK time
Location: Online via Zoom - please contact Niall.mackenzie@glasgow.ac.uk for details.
Institutional creation or institutionalization?
Scottish Parliament and its building
Sabina Siebert (University of Glasgow) and Kevin Orr (University of St Andrews)
The emerging body of literature on institutional work provides an increasingly nuanced view of the relationship between actors and institutions. In this seminar we focus on one aspect of institutional work – creation of institutions, and specifically on the link between institutions and the buildings housing them (their age, design, location, and even décor within the building). In her article on the creation of the London School of Economics, Czarniawska (2009: 430) commented on the importance of the building as a stabilizing artefact for the institution: ‘With the exception of clandestine schools, a school is not a school without a building’. In another study, Delacour and Leca (2011) suggested that the nineteenth century annual arts exhibition in Paris met its demise because it never established its presence in a building. Acknowledging role of the building as ‘a strong material anchor’ (Monteiro & Nicolini, 2014: 4) for institutions, we analyse the case of the Scottish Parliament. This is the case of a relatively ‘young’ parliament. It was created in 1999 and its building opened in 2004.
We ask the questions: How has the institution of Scottish Parliament been created? Have mimetic processes linked to institutional isomorphism played their part? Is the Parliament striving to conform to the Westminster model of Parliament, or striving to be original? How does the modern design of the building aid the creation of the modern institution? In the seminar we draw on the metaphor put forward by Barbara Czarniawska (2013: 106) of an institution as an anthill. Institutional creation is long term practice and it “takes many ants to build it” and “institutional entrepreneurs are not necessarily those individuals who become heroes of popular narratives”. Who are the institutional entrepreneurs in the Scottish Parliament?
Sabina Siebert
Sabina Siebert is a professor of management in the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow. Her research interests include organizations and professions, organizational trust and distrust, and management in the creative industries. She has researched an ancient profession – Scottish advocates (a paper based on this study was published in the Academy of Management Journal). She was an Academic Fellow of the UK Parliament and an Academic Fellow of the Scottish Parliament. In collaboration with Barbara Czarniawska, she is also researching the careers of secret service agents drawing on spies’ biographies.
Kevin Orr
Kevin Orr is Professor of Management, University of St Andrews, and Senior Fellow at the Institute of European Studies, University of California, Berkeley. He is collaborating with Professor Sabina Siebert as Academic Fellow of the Scottish Parliament. His writing on the theme of organizational ghosts appears in Organization Studies, and the International Journal of Management Reviews.
