Three’s a Crowd: The Role of Inter-logic Relationships in Highly Complex Institutional Fields

Abstract

Institutional complexity is increasingly seen in terms of potential schisms between logics in pluralist fields. However, research into complexity is mostly confined to binary institutional logics that oversimplify settings where more logics interact. The reorganized mental health service we studied brought a range of expert groups together in a highly complex institutional field. Three logics were seen to be continually in play: a health logic based on expert medical values, a care logic of holistic values, and a logic of integration based partly on managerial priorities but also shared more broadly. The paper identifies how the pattern of conflicting and reinforcing inter-logic relations that underpinned this field was constituted and further explores a number of critical implications for complexity theory.