Institutional Logics as Flexible Resources-How Coca-Cola Uses Community Logic to Respond to Obesity

In this paper, we draw from a toolkit view of institutional logics and examine the use of logics by organizations as flexible strategic resources. We do this by analyzing how a logic already adopted by an organization can be used to respond to new external pressures so as to maintain the status quo. Empirically, we focus on a very topical social issue, obesity, and examine how the leading beverage company uses the community logic, a logic it has built around a symbolic community and successfully used for decades to support the dominant market logic, to respond to the obesity-related demands placed on it. We identify four different mechanisms by which logics can be flexed so as to accommodate new expectations but still continue to support the dominant goals of the organization and thus maintain stability.