Adapting to New Institutional Logics: The Response of Spanish Firms to Market Deregulation in the Post-Franco Era

Institutional logics guide social action. Research has examined outcomes of logics, including organizational strategies and structures, and demonstrated they are historically contingent. Less is known about the responses of organizations when logics change. Currently, the imagery is of organizations responding uniformly. Yet, a uniform response is unlikely. We examine how Spanish manufacturing firms respond to the liberalization of labor practices following the death of Franco in 1975. We show how moments of transition create opportunities for previously repressed logics to resurface and raise the importance of community as a missing dimension within institutional accounts of organizational fields.