Emergent research - Dr Simon Parker
Does your institution have parasites? Research by Dr Simon Parker shows that parasites can cause huge changes to an institution.
Organisations and institutions are becoming increasingly opaque and complex. In a forthcoming Academy of Management Review article Dr Simon Parker (Nottingham University Business School) alongside Dr Jukka Rintamäki (Aalto University) and Professor André Spicer (Bayes Business School) highlight a new type of actor that uses this complexity to conduct illegitimate activities called “institutional parasites”. Institutional parasites can be organisations or individuals who maintain an institution in the short term but cause great damage to the legitimacy of that institution in the long term.
Exploring examples of bogus sustainability accreditations, essay-mills and fake news media the authors show how parasites can remain hidden or tolerated in an institution for long periods of time by providing services and even conducting core practices.
Our research shows that parasites can cause huge changes to an institution. If institutions do nothing, they can drift along becoming further encumbered by more and more parasitical actors, leading to collapse and failure. Alternatively, elite actors may try to tackle the parasite problem with policies, rules, and guidance. Unfortunately, this can provide more opacity and thus opportunities for parasites to thrive.
We argue that the only way to get rid of parasites is for elite actors to focus their efforts on maintaining the integrity of institutional processes and to reform the institution, reinforcing its purpose and not just piling on more policies and guidance. Here the authors argue that sometimes maintaining an institution requires changing it.
