This article develops a conceptual framework for explaining how individual embeddedness in multiple institutional logics at the field level and in political networks at the societal level influence managerial decisions within organizations. By considering the institutional and political environments surrounding management departments in newly founded universities in Turkey, we propose that the degrees of individual decision-maker’s embeddedness in alternative institutional logics (single vs multiple) and in different political networks (closed vs open) influence their decisions on hiring new academicians. We consider that organizational actors’ instantiations of logics together with political networks delineate their identities. Accordingly, decision-makers embedded in a single logic and/or a closed network will tend to hire academicians similar to themselves whereas those embedded in multiple logics and/or an open network will be more likely to hire academicians different from themselves. We also elaborate our conceptual framework by considering the influences of logic-related networks, decoupling in academic staffing, geographic locations and ownership of universities. By doing so, we first contribute to a better explanation of institutional and political diversities in academic cadres in management departments in new Turkish universities. Second, we expand micro-level view of institutional logics by integrating societal level political networks into the analysis
