Institutionally eclipsed organizational practices

Purpose Institutional theory is focused on the prevalence of social value over economic imperatives in organizational life, but what happens when taken-for-granted practices offer neither technical nor institutional value at all? In this paper, the authors theorize an important but omitted in the organizational literature scenario and a class of institutionalized practices. The authors conceptualize them as institutionary eclipsed practices. The paper offers a theory of institutional shadow and institutional eclipsed practices that explains the remarkable persistence of institutions despite the obvious absence of value. Design/methodology/approach The authors offer a theoretical framework for studying institutional practices that have neither economic nor social value. The authors illustrate institutionally eclipsed practices with an example of educational organizations and practices, but the theory of institutional shadow developed in this paper goes beyond this case. Findings Organizations adopt global institutional standards for local organizational fields where different institutional norms prevail and different meanings and values are attached to these global institutions. In some cases, such institutions may lose their technical value and have no social (legitimizing) value in a new institutional context. Such practice is taken for granted, enacted, reproduced and maintained as necessary because it is encoded into the very institutional image of a profession (and social role). An institutionally eclipsed practice becomes a taken-for-granted, integral part of organizational members’ daily routines. Still, neither efficiency nor social benefits and value are offered by such a practice for organizational members. At the same time, as institutionalized practices are resistant and usually immune to technical, economic and social changes, they tend to endure and persist in organizations. Both a disintegrated practice and organizational members who enact it get into the limbo of the institutional shadow. Originality/value The authors distinguish and theorize three main conditions that allow institutionally eclipsed practices to emerge, proliferate and persist in organizations and across organizational fields. These factors include the presence of institutional meaning, the taken-for-granted quality (which means the immunity to technical, social and material changes) and the absence of contradictions. Together these three virtues allow institutionally eclipsed practices to be easily embedded into organizational contexts, being enacted by organizational members and avoiding abandonment and deinstitutionalization despite uselessness.