Institutional complexity in action: how do prison directors engage in institutional maintenance work?

This study examines how institutional complexity shapes individual attention and engagement with institutional work. While previous research has highlighted emotional identification as a key driver of logic activation, we argue that cognitive accessibilityfamiliarity with and willingness to activate different institutional logics -plays an equally critical role. We conducted qualitative research focused on understanding the cognitive processes of twenty-three French prison directors to examine how individuals mobilise institutional logics in institutional work. Our findings show that directors often engage in institutional maintenance by strategically activating logics beyond those to which they are emotionally attached. We identify three factors that enhance cognitive accessibility: professional training, inter-organisational mobility, and prior socialisation. These findings contribute to the literature on institutional work by repositioning accessibility as a structuring attentional mechanism and by offering a cognitive redefinition of hybridisers -not as emotionally dual-anchored actors, but as individuals able to draw from a broad and accessible repertoire of logics.