10.5465/AMBPP.2015.107 DEALING WITH INSTITUTIONAL COMPLEXITY: PUBLIC PROCUREMENT OF MANAGEMENT CONSULTING SERVICES FRIDA PEMER Stockholm School of Economics P.O. Box 6501 S-11359 Stockholm Sweden TALE SKJOLSVIK Oslo and Akershus University, Norway INTRODUCTION In recent years, the influence of institutional logics on organizations has gained increased interest in organizational studies (Cloutier & Langley, 2013). But although recent research has begun to focus on how organizations are exposed to multiple institutional logics with incompatible demands, few empirical studies have been performed – especially at the micro level (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006; Lounsbury 2008; Reay & Hinings, 2009). Several authors have pointed out that studying the micro level is highly important as actors “shape and change institutional logics” (Hallett & Ventresca 2006:215) by their social interaction (Cloutier & Langley 2013). There is thus a strong need for more knowledge about how actors deal with institutional complexity and conflicting demands at the micro level (Pache & Santos 2010; Greenwood et al. 2011; Lawrence et al. 2011; Cloutier & Langley 2013). We attend to this need by investigating how organizational actors at the micro level respond to institutional complexity (Lounsbury 2008; Greenwood et al. 2011). As empirical example, the public procurement of professional services – in particular management consulting services (MCS) – is used. MCS are often described as an extreme form of professional services, which highlight the specific characteristics and challenges associated with this type of services. Thus, these types of services form an illustrative example (Eisenhardt & Graebner 2007). Traditionally, the MCS field has been governed by a professional logic and trustful relationships between consultants and clients, a high degree of intangible and subjective qualities, close client-consultant collaboration and joint value creation (Fournier 2000; David et al. 2013). The management consulting industry has to a large extent been “unregulated” and escaped attempts from clients and professional associations to formalize and define what denotes high quality in MCS (Alexius 2007; Alexius & Pemer 2013). Instead, the perceived quality of MCS has tended to be the outcome of social and discursive construction processes by actors involved in the projects (Näslund & Pemer, 2012). The quality of the MCS has thus taken the form of a subjective and socially constructed “worth” rather than an objective and inherent “value” (Guba & Lincoln, 1989). In the public sector in the EU, however, public procurement is governed by EU directives. The EU directives advocate the use of a transactional purchasing approach with clearly defined buyer-seller roles, detailed purchasing specifications and formalized purchasing processes (Axelsson & Wynstra, 2002). The EU directives also state that buyer-seller relationships should not influence the selection of suppliers, and that project specifications and quality evaluation criteria must be objective, transparent and specified ex ante in the requests for proposals (RFP). It can thus be argued to build on a market logic (Fournier