LGBT-friendly organizations in Italy: Which institutional entrepreneurs led to the adoption of institutionally controversial practices?

This article explores the adoption of LGBT-friendly policies by companies in Italy, a national context characterized by conflicting pressures related to the deinstitutionalization of heterosexism in the workplace. At this purpose, we looked at the logics and the processes by which diverse practices have been implemented by a heterogeneous sample of 14 organizations. Relying on the notion of institutional entrepreneurship we showed how the intervention of some key actors resulted decisive in shaping two different processes of adoption: a top-down process led by apical actors in the organization and a bottom-up process spurred by trade unions. In this paper we argue how the properties of those actors make these processes complementary but non-coordinated at the same time. This study provides the first account for the adoption of LGBT-friendly policies in Italy and enriches the debate on institutional entrepreneurship by exploring parallel ways to address the same institutional change process.