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2020). Our read of their ideas reveals very different starting points and basic assumptions about the world compared to those of institutional theory. In our paper, we put forth a view of actor as a form of abstraction that helps us specify and focus on the essential features of actors in institutional theory. McBride and Packard—as the title of their commentary,“On the Ontology of Action: Actors Are Not “Abstractions,’” makes clear—do not accept this basic premise of our work, which suggests that our ontological starting points and theirs are fundamentally incompatible. In institutional theory, actors are social constructions constituted by broader institutional frameworks, but, for McBride and Packard, actors exist outside of and precede institutional orders. Thus, their commentary articulates a misunderstanding of our work.

Our analysis begins with a striking observation: the use of the term actor has proliferated dramatically in …