000			01595pab a2200157 454500
008			180718b2016 xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
100			_aCoule, Tracey M.
245			_aRhetoric, organizational category dynamics and institutional change: a study of the UK welfare state
260			_c2016
300			_ap.1059-1076.
520			_aAccounts of institutional change and categorization conventionally assume that high-status change agents can impose change, even to stable category systems, which lower-status actors accommodate in order to ensure social approval and material resources. By exploring the UK Conservative-Liberal Coalition's rhetorical efforts to reform the welfare state, how welfare providers are categorized and the subsequent response of implicated category members, we offer instead an account of institutional change that exposes the agentic limitations of high-status actors. While governments may well be in a position to impose changes in the formal rules of the game through manipulation of material resources (fiscal contraction, privatization, open markets, deregulation), we find that they cannot necessarily monopolize symbolic resources (identities/cultural features). We also find that deviation from cultural expectations is available not only to large, high-status organizations; low-status actors too have discretion over their responses to institutional pressures regarding how they are categorized and subsequently judged. - Reproduced.
650			_aOrganizational change
700			_aBennett, Ellen
773			_aPublic Administration
909			_a113884
999			_c113878 _d113878