Institutional Logics, Risk and Extreme Events: Insights from and for Management Education

Abstract

To shed light on the interrelationship between risk and logics, we explore how multiple institutional logics shape management educators’ experiences of risk in classroom teaching. Using a two-case research design, we analyse an empirical case study of management educators in a UK business school during the COVID-19 pandemic and a case study of emergency physicians during the Ebola epidemic. Comparing these two focal cases of different types of frontline professional work during global health crises, we develop a model of how perceptions of risks and their mitigation shape, and are shaped by, experiences of compatibility, contestation and rejection among multiple logics. Our study extends the literatures on institutional logics and risk by providing insight into the role of multiple logics in the social construction of risk. We also contribute to the management education literature by focusing attention on the risks of physical harm in classroom teaching and by theorizing when, how and why management educators apprehend these risks as ordinary or extraordinary to their normal professional role. Finally, our study has practical implications for risk mitigation at individual and organizational levels and for creatively and safely adapting teaching and learning practices with students during extreme events.