When owners are also sole customers: Configuring institutional logics based on the ownership structure Evidence from a Nordic food retail cooperative

Sammanfattning

European food retail is a large industry valued at €2.1 trillion, notably it is also an industry characterized by diverse ownership structures including a large share of independent retail cooperatives. The aim of this study was to research how a firm’s ownership structure shape organizational practice, carried out through a case-study of Comedo as an independent retail cooperative. Specifically, it explored how the dual role of merchants, who simultaneously acts as owners and sole customers of the central organization shape practices and processes. Drawing on institutional theory our study shows that the organization’s practice is guided by a constellation of market, corporate and community logics that coexist but exert unequal influence. Building on this, the findings reveal that ownership, specifically in an Owner-As-Customer (OAC) structure, determines higher influence to merchant’s market logic and configures the relationship between logics across organizational levels, shifting from a facilitative relationship at the macro level to an additive relationship at the micro level by mechanisms of logic centrality and compatibility. Thus, we conclude that through these mechanisms, the studied ownership structure actively governs how multiple logics are operationalized through translation of strategic goals into daily execution. Thereby, our study contributes to existing institutional logics research by explaining how level dependent relationships between logics are structured and enacted in practice and too ownership studies by extending beyond financial and psychological perspectives toward how it configures institutional authority and governs organizational practice.