Abstract:

In their recent work, Rintamäki, Parker, and Spicer (2025) introduce a distinct type of devious actors, “institutional parasites,” and offer an insightful framework for understanding the impact of these individuals on institutional change. They conceptualize institutional parasites as initially supportive of an established institution but detrimental to it over the long term. They also propose a group of “institutional functionaries,” who maintain and reproduce the institution by eliminating parasites. It is the interaction between these two groups of actors, they contend, that induces unforeseen institutional change. While we acknowledge the theoretical novelty of institutional parasites and functionaries, we question the static conceptualization of these two groups of actors as suggested by Rintamäki et al. (2025). The “black-or-white” theorization of these two types of actors may overlook the critical dynamics of functionaries becoming “bad apples.” Our starting point is that the parasite-functionary relationships can be more dynamic and unfolding, as functionaries might proactively collude with parasites. Based on this, we propose that parasite-functionary collusion may lead to an alternative institutional pathway: “partially functional maintenance.”

Parasitized Functionaries: An Extension to Rintamäki, Parker, and Spicer’s “Institutional Parasites”

Academy of Management Review, vol.50, No.3.

http://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2024.0234

About the author:Runjia Zhang,a PhD candidate in organization and strategic management,whose research seeks to understand the impact of emerging digital technologies on how people work and organize.