Reinsurance is a financial market that trades in the risk of unpredictable and devastating disasters - such as Hurricane Katrina, the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre. Such disasters are increasing in both frequency and severity, with the cost of...

This chapter develops a practice approach to institutional ambidexterity. In doing so it first explores the ‘promise’ of institutional ambidexterity as a concept to address shortcomings within the institutional theory treatment of complexity. However, we argue that this is an empty promise...

This paper addresses the dearth of research into material artifacts and how they are engaged in strategizing activities. Building on the strategy-as-practice perspective, and the notion of epistemic objects, we develop a typology of strategy practices that show how managers use material...

Purpose – Increasing complexity, fragmentation, mobility, pace, and technological intermediation of organizational life make “being there” increasingly difficult. Where do ethnographers have to be, when, for how long, and with whom to “be there” and grasp the practices, norms, and...

Drawing on a year-long ethnographic study of reinsurance trading in Lloyd’s of London, this paper makes three contributions to current discussions of institutional complexity. First, we shift focus away from structural and relatively static organizational responses to institutional complexity...

This paper advances understanding of the coordination of interdependence between multiple intersecting routines and its influence on the balancing of coexisting ostensive patterns. Building on a professional service routine – the deal appraisal routine – and its intersections with four...

This paper advances understanding of the coordination of interdependence between multiple intersecting routines and its influence on the balancing of coexisting ostensive patterns. Building on a professional service routine – the deal appraisal routine – and its intersections with four...