Thornton (2004) revised Friedland and Alford's (1991) inter-institutional scheme to six institutional orders, i.e., the market, the corporation, the professions, the state, the family, and religions.
One variant emphasizes how logics can focus the attention of key decision-makers on a particular set of issues and solutions (Ocasio, 1997), leading to logic-consistent decisions (Thornton, 2002).
Haveman and Rao (1997) showed how the rise of Progressive thought enabled a shift in savings and loan organizational forms in the U.S. in the early 20th century.
Recent empirical research, inspired by the work of Bourdieu, is developing a more pluralistic approach by focusing on multiple competing logics and contestation of meaning.
Thornton, Jones, and Kury (2005) showed how competing logics may never resolve but share the market space as in the case of architectural services.
[12] As these studies demonstrate, the institutional logics perspective offers valuable insights into important intra-organizational processes affecting organizational practices, change, and success.
[13] This growing area of research highlights the way that market structures, processes and consumer behaviors can be shaped by different institutional logics.
[21] Similarly, market intermediaries may use particular rhetorical strategies to navigate multiple institutional logics, as seen in the case of agencies seeking to recruit women to donate their eggs for donor-assisted IVF.
[22] Firms, similarly, must also navigate situations of institutional complexity in markets, as seen in the varying emphasis on fitness, spirituality and commercial logics by different schools and entrepreneurs in the yoga industry.
Concepts such as mentalities, critical events, and time horizon have been mapped out and explained in institutional terms, to be mobilized in future research.