Uncovering institutional orientation as a new strategic orientation in industrial marketing

The environment of industrial markets is highly institutionalized, and research has documented different types of institutional work conducted by firms. However, the way in which individuals within organizations perceive and conduct such work is not well-understood. In this paper, we adopt the “inhabited institutions” approach to study how business-to-business managers experience the institutional work conducted by their companies as a strategic orientation. In-depth interviews with 34 managers reveal that institutional orientation is composed of three dimensions: the key institutional customers concept, institutional embeddedness, and market legitimacy. In addition, our study uncovers the relationships among these dimensions. The article concludes with the theoretical implications of the research as well as with a discussion regarding how a culture of institutional work, i.e., institutional orientation, can be instrumental in enhancing the performance of BtoB firms.