The embedded-agency paradox revisited: Discussing Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of becoming for institutional entrepreneurship

For neo-institutionalists, embedded agency is a paradox. With the help of the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, the paper aims to offer an alternative understanding of how this paradox can be circumvented. Indeed, through their interest in becoming, which considers structure and agency to be completely intertwined, Deleuze and Guattari invite institutional scholars to consider institutional entrepreneurship less as a pre-determined and disruptive event, and more as a continuous process that takes place in everyday practices and actions. By promoting the exploitation of breaches through creative assemblages, considered as alternative resources for institutional entrepreneurship, we shed light on additional initial conditions for entrepreneurial actions within a field.