Capturing institutional change dynamics in public policy fields: a realist literature review on institutional work[Le dynamiques de changement institutionnel au sein de champs de politique publique : une revue réaliste de la littérature sur le travail institutionnel]

Contrary to common perceptions that institutions are unyielding ‘rules of the game' requiring no effort for their preservation, evidence suggests they are far from static and require active engagement to adapt and evolve. Dynamics of change are critical in the face of diverse pressures including social movements, the climate emergency, government reforms, and technological innovations, to ensure their legitimacy and continuity. Exploring these dynamics, a stream of research within organisational institutionalism has been dedicated to understanding how individual and collective actions influence, shape, and transform the institutions that underpin our daily lives. Through a realist literature review, we examine research on institutional work (IW) applied in public policy fields—a conceptual proposition we introduce—to elucidate how public policy implementation leads actors to engage in practices of creation, maintenance, or disruption. Adhering to RAMESES standards, we adopted a PRISMA-aligned protocol, selecting 74 articles for content analysis focused on inter-organisational interactions. Our findings uncover emergent categories of IW across multiple public policies, highlighting their role in fostering institutional change and continuity. We identify significant gaps in existing literature, particularly in the understanding of the symbolic, material, and relational dimensions of IW practices, and the critical convergence between IW and institutional logics to enhance our understanding of change processes in public sector institutions. This review contributes to the research stream by offering a comprehensive synthesis of IW at the field level, proposing a research agenda for exploring IW's potential in addressing public sector challenges.