| dc.description.abstract | In the sociology of institutions, most scholarship has focused on how institutions influence social action. Increasingly, there is interest in the reciprocal relationship, or at least in actors’ purposive efforts to influence institutions (institutional work). However, scholars of institutional work have mainly attended to the efforts of elite actors and resultant implications for the macro-level institutions of global organizational fields. Meanwhile, the efforts of smaller players, such as community organizations focused on local issues, are largely overlooked, to the detriment of understanding the local-level institutional processes within these organizations’ spheres of influence. This study argues that a rich body of institutional research could center on community organizations’ efforts to influence these local processes, without neglecting how these efforts and processes are embedded in global organizational fields. To illustrate, I share the case of Open Table Nashville (OTN)—a homeless assistance organization that advocates for Housing First practices in Nashville, Tennessee. Using semi-structured interviews, direct observations of community activities, and archives, I conduct a three-part analysis of OTN’s local institutional work in relation to the global field of homeless assistance. To start, I examine OTN’s culture of homeless assistance and its alignment with Housing First, as a way of understanding the cultural and cognitive drivers of OTN’s institutional work. Next, I examine some of OTN’s activities in the Nashville context of homeless assistance, as a way of understanding how a global organizational field can encompass local-level fields of action with distinctive institutions and meaningful institutional work. Lastly, I examine some of OTN’s activities in Nashville contexts other than Nashville homeless assistance, as a way of understanding how a broad scope of local institutional work (even work occurring outside of the field context) can implicate field processes. Together, these analyses portray a deeply motivated, activist community organization trying to make institutional impacts in a complex institutional environment at the intersection of an organizational field and a geographical community. Additional such studies could build a body of knowledge of how community organizations contribute to institutional dynamics. Besides benefits to theory, this could help community organizations understand their own efforts from an institutional perspective. | |
