Meeting a multifaceted mission: an institutional logics perspective on water utility decision making

As they respond to mounting climatic and socioeconomic stressors, drinking water utilities must make decisions that span a diverse scope of strategic, planning, and operational issues. Their decision making is guided, in part, by how actors within the organization collectively interpret the situation they face. This sense-making process is profoundly influenced by the organization’s institutional logics, the overarching sets of principles, assumptions, values, and beliefs that provide a shared cognitive framework that shapes how individuals and organizations prioritize objectives and choose among courses of action. Organizations often operate under the influence of multiple logics, the interplay between which will impact how organizations evaluate the appropriateness of the potential actions under consideration. How organizations manage the co-existence of multiple competing logics across an array of real-world decisions is not well-understood, particularly for drinking water providers. This research examines the institutional logics that shaped how mid-sized drinking water utilities in the USA made eight decisions that involve potential trade-offs or uncertain effects. The case studies reflect four commonly occurring types of decisions: repairs of aging, outdated, or degraded infrastructure; updates to operational practices; operational disruptions; and responses to external mandates. Findings indicate that decision making by drinking water utilities is guided by six co-existing institutional logics. Although logics related to reliable water supply and protecting public health and safety are primary considerations, the logics that drive specific utility decisions are context dependent. Further, incompatibilities between and within logics commonly arise. Utilities address incompatibilities across their logics by employing dominant logics and, in certain cases, compromising across logics to minimize conflicting rationalities. These insights help to explain patterns of behavior across utilities and serve to advance understandings of how organizational behavior and sense-making influence the ways in which drinking water utilities navigate decisions central to their ability to provide essential services.