143 / 414
臺大管理論叢
第
27
卷第
1
期
143
Institutional Work in Building Service Innovation
Summary
In recent years, the modern economy has witnessed the increasing importance of service
innovation, recognized as the “next big thing” by Business Week in 2007 and selected as the
buzzword of the year by Global Views Monthly in 2010. This is particularly important for
Taiwan, which is characterized by the longstanding mindset of subcontracting and original
equipment manufacturing. In Taiwan, service innovation is recognized as a new solution for
exploiting opportunities and regarded as a primary source of competitive advantage. Service
areas are not new in practice, but their contribution to business and economy in general has
remained less than that to manufacturing. To address this difficulty, different sectors have
engaged in service innovation in various aspects – value-added services through cloud
computing, intelligent living technology, technological service innovation, dechnology
(design + technology), and innovative pioneering technology. According to these collective
endeavors, service innovation has presented itself as a kind of social movement by changing
values, beliefs, and logics that were taken for granted.
In this study, we address this macro-level change phenomenon through the core concept
in institutional studies – institutional logics, defined as “the socially constructed, historical
patterns of material practices, assumptions, values, beliefs, and rules by which individuals
produce and reproduce their material subsistence, organize time and space, and provide
meaning for their social reality”. In the literature, many scholars have adopted the
institutional logics approach as meta-theory, which provides tremendous capacity to develop
theory and research across multiple levels of analysis. They also call for more research into
engaging in the micro-level foundation to reveal the cross-level interaction among
individuals, organizations, and institutions. Echoing this call, we also draw on the concept of
“institutional work” to explore how strategic actors change institutional logics. Institutional
work is defined as “the purposive action of individuals and organizations aimed at creating,
maintaining, and disrupting institutions”. In other words, performing institutional work
allows actors to perceive institutionalization as a process open to agency. However, the
performative type of institutional work is quite diverse, depending on the temporal and
spatial differences or the actor’s social position. For this, scholars also have suggested that
more studies be needed to enrich the diversity of institutional work and to demonstrate the
Min-Fen Tu
, Associate Professor, Department of Business Administration, Tamkang University
Shih-Chang Hung
, Professor, Institute of Technology Management, National Tsing Hua University