Negotiating Imitation: Examining the Interactions of Consultants and Clients to Understand Institutionalization as Translation
研究了管理顾问与客户在咨询项目中如何通过协商翻译外来实践（如精益管理、质量改进框架），揭示实践演变是谈判结果，且外围实践（如标杆管理）更不易被翻译。
Abstract Organizational scholars increasingly view institutionalization as a process through which actors adapt or translate seemingly successful practices in a field to create variations that are specific to their own organization. Yet little is known about how outsiders who seek to diffuse ‘best practice’ affect translation. We examined interactions between management consultants and their clients in two different consulting projects, which focused on embedding the practice of ‘lean’ in one and the practice of a quality improvement framework in the other. Our findings provide insights into the processes of translation through which promoters and adopters iterate at different stages to reach a compromise, illuminating how the evolution of an imported practice signals the outcome of a negotiation. Furthermore, we demonstrate that management practices are not translated in isolation but enveloped by peripheral practices that are adopted by association. We highlight how the peripheral practice of benchmarking, in both cases, was rarely contested or negotiated and thus proved more resistant to translation. Our analysis allows us to unpack the agency inherent within translation‐as‐negotiation and integrate research on diffusion and translation.