When Worlds Collide: The Internal Dynamics of Organizational Responses to Conflicting Institutional Demands

Organizations are increasingly subject to conflicting demands imposed by their institutional environments. This makes compliance impossible to achieve, because satisfying some demands requires defying others. Prior work simply suggests that organizations develop strategic responses in such situations. Our key contribution is to provide a more precise model of organizational responses that takes into account intraorganizational political processes. As a result, we identify situations in which conflicting institutional demands may lead to organizational paralysis or breakup.