Friedland and Alford’s (1991) seminal paper is cited often and for many reasons, but rarely for their observation that institutions have a dual, viz. symbolic and material, nature. In the decades since organisational institutionalism has mainly been concerned with the symbolic and/or cognitive aspects of institutions, which have been defined as shared rules and meanings (Fligstein 2001) or consisting of cognitive, normative and regulative pillars (Scott 1998).
In contrast, we would like to bring Friedland and Alford’s insight back to centre stage and discuss and explore the material aspects of institutions. We will focus on one particular aspect that comes in two guises: the notion of corporeality in its two shapes as (human) body and as corporation(s). The issues we want to explore revolve around the following:

• The interplay of the symbolic and the material: What does corporeality do to symbols (as rules, meanings, cognitions, logics)? What do symbols do to corporeality?
• The triad of institutions, bodies and corporations: How do they relate and interact? How do they form the basis of current phenomena (e.g. corporate citizienship)? How do bodies and corporations constitute institutions and vice versa?
• The significance of aspects traditionally linked with corporeality, viz. passivity, receptivity, susceptibility: What role do they play in institutions? How can they balance the current agentic bias in organisational institutionalism?

 
We plan to combine six to eight papers in an edited volume. By not giving a word limit we explicitly aim to attract comprehensive papers that go in substance (!) beyond what is currently possible in a journal article. Papers can be theoretical and/or empirical in nature. They should be written in English, and we can provide editorial support to authors with a different native tongue. We aim to publish the book in early 2015 with first full drafts to be submitted by 31^st January 2014. The deadline for extended abstracts is: 31^th December 2013.
 
Please send your extended abstract to both:
 
Elke Weik, University of Leicester, UK
e.weik@le.ac.uk
 
Peter Walgenbach, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Jena, Germany
peter.walgenbach@uni-jena.de  
 
 
References
 
Fligstein, Neil. 2001. "Social Skill and the Theory of Fields." Sociological Theory 19(2):105-25.
Friedland, Roger, and Robert Alford. 1991. "Bringing Society Back In: Symbols, Practices, and Institutional Contradictions." Pp. 232-63 in The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, edited by Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Scott, Richard. 1998. Organizations : rational, natural, and open systems. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall.