Surfing on institutions: When temporary actors in organizational fields respond to institutional pressures

• We study actors who enter a field for a short period of time.
• We address how such temporary actors react to institutional pressures.
• “Surfing on institutions” is suggested as a new answer to institutional pressures.
• “Surfing on institutions” refines the temporariness in a field.
• “Surfing on institutions” refines our understanding of field membership.

SummaryInstitutional scholars have emphasized the isomorphism of actors in organizational fields – but what about organizations that interact only temporarily in such fields – how do they react to their institutional constraints? Based on an in-depth analysis of an architectural contest, this paper focuses on actors who interact with a field only once or occasionally. Such actors do not conform completely to the field’s existing institutions, but rather ‘surf’ on them: adopting their general frameworks to benefit from their dynamics and the predictability of action they guarantee, but adapting institutional rules and conventions to their own benefit. Introducing the notion of ‘surfing on institution’ allows us to complement the literature on organizations’ responses to institutional pressures and norms.