Isomorphism and legitimacy in Spanish contract archaeology: The free fall of an institutional model and the caveat of change

Today's societies are facing multiple challenges given current contradictions between market efficiency and social logics as a result of a particular model of capitalism, modernization and development, which is affecting institutional legitimacy (e.g. Rifkin 2014; Bauman 2013). Complex and contradictory institutional logics associated to organizational responses are in the early stages of the sociological debate in which many research questions remain open, such as: how do organizations cope with uncertainty in order to maintain legitimacy and to survive? How do organizational responses contribute to maintaining institutionalism? And in the opposite direction, can organizational responses affect established institutionalism? To what extent do paradoxical cognitive frameworks generate reflexivity and change? (Seo and Creed 2002; Greenwood et al. 2011; Rao 1998; Scott 1987; Oliver 1991). By employing the institutional framework and a historical event sequencing approach, the root of contradictions is portrayed as the key mediating mechanism of embeddedness and change. Spanish contract archaeology is used as a case study to illustrate how this new organizational form emerged in the field of archaeology in the 1990s as a complex institutionalized process. This gave rise to a new labour market, currently heavily hit by the economic crisis, left on the brink of extinction, and demanding new alternatives.

Institutional complexity. Institutional isomorphism. Legitimacy. Embeddedness and change. Spanish contract archaeology.