Institutionalized Resistance? Public School Responses to Contradictory Institutional Logics

Abstract

This doctoral thesis is an organizational study that explores the institutional and organizational issues behind education inequality in Indonesia that has been perceived as taken-for-granted. By examining a case in which public organizations experienced and responded to an intra-institutional contradiction, i.e., conflicting institutional demands imposed by the same institutional actor, this work draws on and contributes to the institutional theory of organizations, commonly called organizational institutionalism. In doing so, this thesis answers the following two research problems: How do public sector organizations respond to an intra-institutional contradiction? How can both institution-level influences and organizational attributes explain the organizational responses? This monograph consists of 10 chapters, starting with the introduction outlining both the theoretical and empirical background of the study that are then elaborated in Chapters 2 and 3, respectively. Chapter 4 describes the methods employed in the study. Chapter 5 to 8 provides the empirical data describing the findings, followed by the discussions in Chapter 9 highlighting the study’s theoretical contributions. The thesis concludes with a chapter that presents the answers to the research questions, the limitations of the thesis, and suggestions for future studies.