Institutional Work in organic agriculture in Australia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17765/2176-9168.2026v19.e14223Keywords:
Institutional Work, Australia, Public Policy, Sustainable DevelopmentAbstract
This study seeks to understand, from the perspective of Brazilian researchers, how institutional bodies perceive Institutional Work (IW) practices external to the support of Australian organic agriculture. The gap investigated refers to the absence of studies that map, in an integrated way, the three dimensions of IW—political, cultural, and technical—in this context, from a field perspective. Qualitative and descriptive research was conducted, with semi-structured interviews with seven actors selected by snowball sampling in Farmers Markets in Sydney and Canberra, field observation during six visits, and document analysis. Content analysis followed the a priori categories of Lawrence and Suddaby (2006). The results indicate that Institutional Work (IW) can be visualized and evidenced in three dimensions, but with asymmetries in the incidence of evidence. It is concluded that the political work dimension has the highest occurrence of evidence, followed by cultural work and technical work. Note that variable acquisition (political work) has the highest incidence of evidence. On the other hand, the results demonstrated the non-absence of evidence of changes in normative association (cultural work) and theorization (technical work). The study contributes to demonstrating the applicability of the Institutional Work analytical framework in the Australian context.
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