Community in Organizational Research: A Review and an Institutional Logics Perspective

Abstract

More than a decade ago, Thornton and colleagues added community to the inter-institutional system and argued that the community logic shapes individual and organizational behavior, determines organizing principles, and influences community–organization relationships. In justifying this addition and defining the ideal type, they drew mostly upon the literature on local communities and organizations. However, the increasing relevance of other types of communities to organization studies necessitates a re-examination and further specification of this framework. This article starts with a review of 172 papers from highly ranked organization and management journals over the last 30 years and summarizes insights on four types of communities for which discussion has flourished: communities of place, of practice, of users, and of firms. This is followed by pattern matching to explore whether these four types follow the initial description of the community logic. We find four variants of the community logic, one for each type of community. We show that all the reviewed types organize around a common boundary, which yields a new definition of the community logic. This commonality also offers scope for comparative research and reconceptualization of community–organization relationships. Furthermore, by specifying the organizing principles that vary, we extend previous research and explicate the main underpinnings of community organizing. The paper ends by suggesting avenues for future research that further embrace an institutional logics perspective on communities.