ADOPTING AND RESISTING EVIDENCE-BASED CALLS FOR CHANGE: DISCURSIVE RESOURCES IN ORGANIZATIONAL RESPONSES TO INSTITUTIONAL PRESSURES

Abstract

Institutional forces often pressure organizations to conform and behave in similar manners even when those actions go against an organization’s best interests. One particular U.S. football organization, known as the team that never punts, provided an excellent case study of the organizational communication practices of an outlier that rejects institutional forces. The organization adopted evidence-based management built on statistics in place of institutional traditions for calling plays. This case study identified organizational communication practices used to both resist and acquiesce to institutional pressures. The discursive resources used by the coach, who was an institutional resistance leader, and the members included legitimacy communication, aspects of appreciative inquiry and dialogic public relations, public relations framing, and leadership framing. The power of legitimation communication and framing can help leaders and members co-construct reality, preferred organizational identities, and hopeful anticipations of the future. Though some evidence (such as concussion data) may present such a threat to organizational identity that it will be rejected, confidence built on statistical certainty can persuade members to achieve organizational outcomes that outsiders consider impossible.