This paper examines how strategy implementation and daily work processes impact each other,and how strategy-related change occurs. We use the lens of institutional theory to understandhow strategy and control processes are woven through a prominent international manufacturingorganization. We show that the interplay between the formal and indigenous institution steers strategy implementation as well as daily work. We find that both strategy implementation and daily work are directed by the indigenous institution, and maintained through communication of the intentions, or mission, of the formal institutions without specification of ways or meansby the formal institution. It is control through intention, or mission. Strategy implementation,which is usually understood to be a separate, activity, is in this case a set of communications that flow through the indigenous institution and are filtered and transformed in such a way thatthe implemented strategy is not the same as the strategy prescribed by the formal institution.In this case, the indigenous institution is revealed to be in a long-term engagement with the issue of where control should be located, and it introduced the concept of “position ownership”as an unofficial operating strategy, even though the concept has no existence in the formal institution or formal strategy. This paper clarifies boundaries between the formal institution of management documents and structure, and the realm of action, in which the indigenous institution dominates. The concept of the indigenous institutions reifies the underlying interactions of the participants in an understandable and useable way, revealing the durabilityand reflection jointly realized by participants. Adding this perspective to our way ofunderstanding work gives us a way to understand the capacity of organizations to be both steady and flexible. It also provides a way to understand the difficulty of attempting to controlchange initiated by the formal institutions.