Institutional biography and the institutionalization of a new organizational template: Building the global branded hotel chain

Mairi Maclean, Charles Harvey and Roy Suddaby

Business History, 2024, vol. 66, issue 1, 311-339

Abstract: This article expands understanding of how institutional biography informs institutional change by examining Conrad Hilton’s role in building the global branded hotel chain (1946–1969). We show how an individual’s institutional biography can play a pivotal role in their development as an institutional entrepreneur and the institutionalisation of a new organisational template. Biography, informed by the institutions individuals experience in their life trajectories, shapes the process by which an individual becomes an institutional entrepreneur; influencing the institutionalisation of a new template by enabling entrepreneurs to acquire a more central position within their field. Hilton’s self-narrative became closely coupled with the ‘grand narrative’ of post-war U.S. capitalism. The Hilton case illustrates how institutional tensions, embracing national interests, corporate interests, and individual self-interest, can become distilled into the identity, choices, and ambitions – the personal biographical narrative – of individuals who play a formative role in the institutions they build, change, or disrupt.

Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2022.2031988

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