Creative Forces for Entrepreneurship: The Role of Institutional Change Agents

In this article, we examine the emerging role of women entrepreneurs within changing socio-cultural institutions. The current literature presents limited insight on the processual dynamics of entrepreneurship among socio-cultural change, and so we adopt an inductive theory-building approach, drawing on the concept of institutional entrepreneurship. From this, we see the interaction of women’s entrepreneurial practices with complex social and cultural structures. Our qualitative data draw on 31 interviews with female entrepreneurs operating in Saudi Arabia, phenomenologically capturing their experiences as they engage with the institutions of their societal surroundings. We explore how entrepreneurial enactment takes place within patriarchal constraint and socialized expectations of women. Top-down regulatory change may open space for women’s entrepreneurship, but social change demands careful navigation, with only gradual cultural shifts. We characterize Saudi women entrepreneurs as institutional change agents in a recursive process between their entrepreneurial activities and the dominant social systems of family and societal expectations. Our findings contribute to the understanding of how entrepreneurial agency interacts with the forces of context. Importantly, we move beyond the celebration of emancipated activism and instead see Saudi women’s entrepreneurial activity as part of a multifaceted and gradual change process, evolving towards a progressive entrepreneurial culture.

The powerful imagery of entrepreneurship as a means to induce and explain institutional change is gaining momentum (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006; Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). In response to criticisms that institutional theory was chiefly being used to explain homogeneity and persistence, important efforts have been devoted to restoring human agency in explanations of endogenous institutional change (DiMaggio, 1988; Sewell, 1992; Emirbayer & Mische, 1998). However, the image of the entrepreneur as institutional change agent has also been a source of controversy among institutional theorists, especially when accompanied by voluntarist, un-embedded conceptions of individual action (Holm, 1995; Leca & Naccache, 2006). As a result we observe vivid scholarly discussions on how to solve the "paradox of embedded agency"– i.e. on explaining how institutional change is possible if actors are fully conditioned by the institutions that they wish to change (Holm, 1995; Seo & Creed, 2002; Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006).

Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) literature identifies various dimensions of integration to deal with fragmented, sectoral, and ad hoc approaches to managing various uses offshore. However, the spatial dimension of MSP has receded into the background, the dimensions of integration remain ill-defined, and there is a lack of appreciation for the institutional changes that these integration efforts induce and require. Moreover, in light of the urgency of energy transition, offshore wind farms (OWF) are often prioritized over other interests in MSP practice. This paper uses the case of the Dutch North Sea Dialogues (NSD) to explore to what extent actors during the NSD pursued formal and informal institutional change to progress the various dimensions of integration in line with the normative principles of MSP to improve spatial integration between OWF and other interests at sea. The NSD provided an, initially temporary, platform that proved key for stakeholders to pursue subsequent formal and informal institutional changes that progressed integration in MSP. While formal institutional changes were achieved during the NSD, informal institutional changes also proved fundamental in progressing various dimensions of integration. The NSD shows that incremental institutional change can be effective in progressing integration, but also shows the limits to this approach. The place-based and temporal dimensions of integration require additional attention because this is where stakeholders most notably rely on existing institutional frameworks and conflicts are most prominent.

New sport policies often prompt organizations in the field to alter their structures and processes. Little is known, however, about the tactics of those leading institutional change around sport policy. To address this gap, the authors draw on the concept of institutional entrepreneurship—the activities of actors who leverage resources to create institutional change. Using a qualitative case study approach, the authors examine how two coalitions that served as institutional entrepreneurs in Washington and Oregon created and passed the first youth sport concussion legislation in the United States. The analysis of this study reveals that these coalitions (including victims’ families, sport organizations, advocacy groups, and concussion specialists) engaged in political, technical, and cultural activities through the use of specific tactics that allowed them to harness expertise and resources and generate support for the legislation. Furthermore, the findings of this study suggest a sequencing to these activities, captured in a model of institutional entrepreneurship around sport policy.

This paper examines the interrelationships between institutional change and entrepreneurship development in countries that until recently were operating under the rules of central planning. The evidence presented in the paper shows important differences in state-entrepreneurship relationships between former Soviet republics, where the slow pace of institutional change and major institutional deficiencies has constrained the development of productive entrepreneurship; Central European countries that are now part of the European Union (EU), where institutional changes associated with accession to the EU are associated with the state becoming an important agent of formal and informal institutional change; and China which presents something of a conundrum, since entrepreneurship has developed rapidly despite major formal institutional deficiencies. Yang's concept of double entrepreneurship is used to explain the so-called Chinese puzzle, where enterprise takes on a socio-political as well as a purely economic dimension. The paper demonstrates the complexity of institutional-entrepreneurship relationships, illustrated with examples of how entrepreneurs can influence institutional change even in hostile institutional environments.

With arguments for and against an agency embedded in the same institutional field being in a position to trigger large-scale institutional change endogenously still continuing, discussions on personality variables (related to the institutional entrepreneur or change agent or Community Champion, as this chapter argues to be more apt to use in a social context) have been relegated to the background. What sparks such entrepreneurial activity? Why does only one out of so many actors volunteer to lead such change? Based on literature from the disciplines of institutional change, volunteerism and transformative leadership and based inductively on four cases of successful transformational institutional change by change agents or Community Champions in Odisha, this chapter proposes a framework of nine attributes for voluntary action by these Community Champions. Unlike the variables identified in the literature on institutional change and volunteerism, these attributes are more relevant for a social context. Of particular interest is the attribute level of selflessness, which is strongly linked to altruism.

This paper makes two claims: insights from gender research improve understandings of informal institutions and institutional change, and studying informal institutions helps scholars understand the gap between formal institutional change and outcomes. Informed by institutional analysis and feminist institutionalist scholarship, it explores the relationship between informal institutions, institutional change, and gender equality, using gender equality to scrutinize issues central to institutional change, demonstrating that institutional analyses improve when gender dynamics are incorporated. Showing the gendering of power relations highlights power in institutional change in new ways, improving understandings of why institutional change rarely happens as intended by institutional designers.

As agents of strategic institutional change, institutional entrepreneurs (IEs) draw resources from their structural environment to alter the structural context in which they are embedded. In this article, we explore which resources IEs mobilize in different structural settings. We distinguish between (positional or free) field resources and personal resources, all of which may be material, cultural, social, symbolic or political in kind. Our review of leading case studies of institutional entrepreneurship shows that centrally positioned IEs draw primarily on organizational positional resources. By contrast, peripherally positioned IEs rely mainly on the skilful mobilization of free resources as well as on the personal resources of individuals. Also the field’s degree of institutionalization has an impact on IEs’ resources: in emerging fields where field positions and field boundaries are not yet defined, resources must be imported from mature fields. Furthermore, although resource-poor peripheral IEs may set off institution-building processes in emerging fields, they are usually superseded by central organizational actors during later stages of institution-building.

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) is in the process of restructuring the European water policy towards river basin management (RBM). The transposition of the WFD requires institutional change in order to comply with its substantive and procedural requirements. This paper investigates changes in water management collaboration in a federally organised Member State with regard to the configuration of involved actors and the spatial scale at which issues are considered. Based on qualitative methods, the paper presents a case study of the German Odra river basin and the governance of nutrient pollution whose origins are located all along the river and which specifically impacts coastal zones. We looked at actors most relevant to this management problem, that is, public administrations operating within different administrative boundaries, the agricultural sector and environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In order to capture institutional change, a conceptual framework was constructed to evaluate changes in collaboration on three interrelated levels: formal institutional change, informal institutional change and changes in actors’ mental models. We explain complex institutional change as a product of multiple dynamics, which includes the content of shared mental models and a benefit–cost calculation that takes transaction costs into consideration.

Post-institutionalism is a promising direction in the study of institutions, developing the methodological ideas of critical institutionalism to build an extended institutional approach (in G. Hodgson's terminology). The mission of post-institutionalism is the development of interdisciplinary, complexity-centered methodologies for the analysis of institutions, allowing the development of institutional research beyond the framework of both new and original institutional theories. The article briefly outlines the logic of the creation and origins of the post-institutional theory, provides its methodological features, philosophical foundations, and guidelines for the research program. Post-institutionalists proceed from the fact that the methodological tools of both the new institutional economics and the traditional (“old”) institutionalism are inadequate to the tasks of understanding and explaining the qualitatively complicated institutions of late capitalism. Such institutions are internally heterogeneous, highly fluid, combine different coordinating principles (logics), their functions and boundaries are difficult to identify. The focus of special attention in post-institutional economics is assemblages – ​institutional systems that combine heterogeneous institutions with irreducible logics. Institutional assemblages are highly adaptive but also functionally redundant and conflict-prone. Bricolage is considered as the main type of institutional change in post-institutionalism, which is understood as the recombinant creation of institutions by a multitude of actors from the elements available in the access to solve current institutional problems. Institutional change agents are not only institutional entrepreneurs, but also institutional “workers”, i. e. ordinary actors in their daily routine. The main function of institutions from the point of view of post-institutionalism is not the minimization of transaction costs, but the creation of transaction value.

Informal institutional changes take place at different levels in the European Union (EU) within all types of governance arrangements, especially after such significant events as EU enlargements. These adjustments not only influence the operation of informal networks, but also the functioning of more or less formal institutions. This article analyses informal institutional changes within the Social Protection Committee (SPC) — a committee that operates within the framework of the Open Method of Coordination — after the 2004 enlargement. As specialized committees form an important part of the policy‐making process in the European Union, analyses on the impacts of recent EU enlargements are not complete without examining how the inclusion of new member states influenced these arenas of decision‐making. Based on a micro‐level analysis of institutional reinterpretation and change, the article argues that enlargement has been leading to informal changes in working practices within the SPC, which have the potential to affect both social governance in the EU and policy outcomes in the long run.

Entrepreneurs do more than just buy low and sell high; they sometimes also change our institutions, including our categories of thought. New institutional economics has been examining incentives that drive individuals to bring about market-supporting institutional arrangements. There is, however, an aspect of entrepreneurship conducive to institutional changes that has been neglected by contemporary institutionalist theories and that remains underdeveloped in entrepreneurship research. When and how does entrepreneurship bring about institutional change? I suggest that entrepreneurs are agents of institutional change when cultural categorization is ambiguous with regard to the proper and permissible applications of novel artifacts. Motherhood, for example, used to be a simple category, but surrogacy changed that radically. Examining newspaper evidence, social surveys, statutory law, and judicial cases, I show how entrepreneurs, by provoking a change in interpretation and judgment, challenged the existing institutional legal ordering of procreation turning a technically feasible method of surrogacy into current practice.

This in-depth, comparative case study of the creation of the small and medium enterprise credit market in Mexico explores the work of actors to craft new organizational practices, as well as the symbols that sustain institutionalization efforts. The study demonstrates that, to craft new institutional practices, individual actors engage in two distinct layers of institutional work. One entails purposefully visible, staged, scripted, and carefully documented work to suspend existing institutions and allow for experimentation as well as to legitimize new practices. The second entails invisible, undocumented work to recruit allies, find resources, experiment with new practices, coordinate strategies of action, and build political toolkits. While visible work—which is the focus of most research on institutional change—was determinant at every stage of the change process because of its symbolic effects, actors spent most of their time and energy on invisible work, which they referred to as “the real work.” The paper shows that every act of visible institutional work was crafted through considerable amounts of invisible institutional work. Since new practices and new symbols were crafted through gradual and iterative processes of experimentation, invisible work includes many failures that remain undocumented. It also includes the work of midlevel, invisible actors who, often, are the real and unreported agents of institutional change. The findings have implications for our understanding of the mechanisms of institutional maintenance and change.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify changes in formal and informal institutions that influence the sharing economy development. Design/methodology/approach: An approach to the analysis of sharing economy based on institutional economics has been proposed. It considers both formal and informal institutions vital for the sharing economy’s development. However, it focuses on the latter as the nature, role and design of informal institutions remain undiscovered while for sharing economy they seem crucial. Findings: Based on the findings it can be argued that informal institutions are of great importance for the sharing economy development. Despite the often-stressed role of regulations, it becomes clear that in this case, informal institutions may evolve more quickly and fill the gaps left by formal norms. It is of great importance than to support trust growth between the users and strengthen the evolution of property’s perception – from owning to sharing. Practical implications: The results may be useful for the sharing platforms as they stress the importance of their regulations and role in building trust between the users and providers of goods or services. They may contribute to a better design of the platforms and further development. The findings are important also for the users as they need an encouraging environment to operate effectively. Originality/value: The research is original because of the adopted perspective – rarely is the institutional economics base for sharing economy analysis, still, it offers important insights. The analysis indicates important changes in institutions connected with sharing economy and points which of them are crucial for its further development. Moreover, it stresses the role of informal institutions which despite growing importance are often excluded from the analysis.

Institutional entrepreneurship in sustainable urban development: Dutch successes as inspiration for transformation