Antecedents of Settlement on a New Institutional Practice: Negotiation of the ISO 26000 Standard on Social Responsibility

In contrast to theory and research on institutionalized forms, less attention has been given to the creation of new institutional practices and arrangements. Researchers have recently argued that new institutional practices reflect settlements or truces reached by organizations embedded within fields but, to date, there is a dearth of research on how these settlements are negotiated. Based on a study of the formal negotiation of, and settlement on, ISO 26000, a new international standard defining the normative domain of corporate social responsibility (CSR), this research draws from a cognitive perspective to develop and test an organizational model of settlement on a new institutional practice. Findings point to the important roles of logic pluralism within organizations and organizational negotiation frames as determinants of settlement and the creation of new institutional practices. Contrary to traditional expectations in the literature on institutional conformity, the moderating effect of an organization's embeddedness in the negotiation process did not facilitate settlement.