Institutional actors

Here, our focus is on institutional actors and what characterizes them. For organizations, it is the immediate environment that is the most tangible. It is the world they encounter every day. They have exchanges with other organizations and individuals, and they are surrounded by more or less explicit institutional products, and thereby also by the actors that produce and deliver them – that is, institutional actors. Immediate institutional actors create explicit structures that limit the organizations' ability to act. A good understanding of these structures creates opportunities for conscious direct action, even if it can be difficult to know which products and actors should be prioritized and how to relate to them, and in which situations different kinds of behaviour are suitable. However, a good understanding helps us to be prepared for situations that can arise. Organizations and their managers can also prepare themselves for alternative courses of action, the suitability of which may vary depending on the situation.