Variations in Practice Adoption: The Roles of Conscious Reflection and Discourse
挑战了实践采纳变异源于有意识决策的主流观点，提出采纳过程的关键在于参与者的有意识参与程度，并构建了包含接受和实施两个制度维度的框架，揭示话语如何影响实践采纳的展开。
We argue that our understanding of practice adoption has been limited by the prevailing view that variations in adoption stem from consciously made decisions.We counter this position by arguing that a key-and neglected-aspect of the adoption process concerns the level of conscious engagement of those involved.In so doing, we theorize that there are two distinct institutional dimensions necessary for understanding how practice adoption takes place: acceptance and implementation.We develop these dimensions to provide a framework showing that different within-organization responses will be associated with differing levels of acceptance of the need to adopt a practice-the acceptance dimension-and differing levels of conscious reflection during implementation of the practice-the implementation dimension.We then unpack this framework to explain how variations in discourse play a determining role in how practice adoption unfolds.This reveals an interesting institutional paradox: the discursive characteristics that make a practice more easily accepted also reduce the conscious engagement needed for its implementation.We spend the balance of the article developing the implications of our theorizing for understanding the process of practice adoption.Institutional theorists have long documented the manner in which field-level pressures shape organizational action (e.g., Hinings & Greenwood, 1988;Meyer, Scott, & Strang, 1987;Selznick, 1949;Tolbert & Zucker, 1983).However, while such pressures are certainly highly salient in determining organizational outcomes, most scholars agree that they are not fully deterministic (DiMaggio, 1988; Hirsch & Lounsbury, 1997;Oliver, 1991).In other words, even as legitimate practices-those behaviors, strategies, ideas, technologies, or structures (Strang & Soule, 1998) that have obtained a "'social fact' quality [that] renders them as the only conceivable, 'obvious,' or 'natural' way to conduct an organizational activity" (Oliver, 1991: 148)-