Maintaining Flat - A qualitative study of how institutional actors maintain a flat organizational structure

Abstract

This paper investigates how institutional actors in the flat organization Tech AB, maintains their organizational structure. The paper builds upon a qualitative method and consists of 27 interviews, with both employees and managers. Drawing upon the notion of Institutional Work, this paper focuses on the work of maintaining institutions. This study has identified sixteen forms of work, aimed at both maintaining and creating institutions. In this paper, the different types of work builds upon the study presented by Currie, Lockett, Finn, Martin and Waring (2012), which implies that the work of creating institutions also could be seen as maintaining institutions. However, out of sixteen types of work, six forms of work in order to maintain institutions have been selected in order to fulfil the aim of this paper. All of the six form of work have been related to the work of maintaining institutions. Additionally, this paper shows that all institutional actors continuously engage in five of the types of work in order to maintain the organizational structure. However, this study also demonstrates that one work of maintenance did not maintain the structure directly, but instead pressured the flat organizational structure. Hence, this paper contributes with the idea that the distinction between the work of creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions might be simplified. This since, this study indicates that the concepts are more intertwined to each other, compared to what has been shown in previous research.