The Immateriality of Material Practices in Institutional Logics

According to most theoretical formulations, institutional logics contain both an ideational and a material dimension. Whereas the ideational aspect, such as cognitive frames and symbols, has received significant attention in the growing literature on institutional logics, the material aspect has remained largely invisible and often implicit. We analyze the 16 most central theoretical and empirical works on institutional logics with the aim of exploring how the material dimension of logics has been conceptualized and researched. Our findings suggest that materiality has been interpreted primarily as practices and structures, and rarely as physical objects. We explore some consequences of omitting physical materials as an object of study in institutional logics research and point to avenues for future research that may enhance theory development of institutional logics by explicitly attending to the role of materials.