Discourse and institutional change in mass retail – the case of an institutional entrepreneur in France

When institutional change outruns the change agent: The contested terrain of entrepreneurial microfinance for those in poverty

We contribute to the literature on institutional and organizational change by integrating two related areas of study: the theory and methods of analysis informed by the research on institutional logics and historical-event sequencing. Institutional logics provide the theory to understand how the content of culture influences organizational change; historical-event sequencing reveals the underlying patterns of cultural transformation. We apply this dual perspective to the cases of institutional stability and change in organizational governance in three industries: accounting, architecture, and higher-education publishing. Research on governance has focused on changes in organizational design between markets, hierarchies, and networks. Missing from this research is an understanding of how institutions at the wider societal level motivate organizations to adopt one of these governance forms over another. We examine how the governance of firms in these industries has been influenced by the institutional logics of the professions, the market, the state, and the corporation by focusing on three mechanisms – institutional entrepreneurs, structural overlap, and historical-event sequencing. Overall, our findings reveal how accounting was influenced by state regulation producing a punctuated equilibrium model, architecture by professional duality producing a cyclical model, and publishing by market rationalization producing an evolutionary model of institutional change in organizational governance.

We propose studying institutional change and the role of organizations behind it in real-time as the process unfolds and midstream without knowing the success or failure of the project.Our approach is in contrast to most analyses of institutional change that rely on retrospective accounts of successful institutionalization projects. This past methodology runs the risk of `sampling on the dependent variable,' limiting knowledge of the institutional change process to a narrow slice of successful cases. The context for this new approach to institutional change is the development of ‘American-style’ employee stock options (ESOPs) in German venture capital contracts from 1997 to 2000. We examine the attempts of ‘institutional entrepreneurs’ (German law firms) to alter the existing institutional environment to implement American-style ESOPs for their clients (venture capital firms and entrepreneurs). In contrast to past research on institutional change, our analysis reveals a more complex picture of the process of competition and collective action in leading to change. Our approach highlights the conflicting motives of organizational actors as they battle for and against institutional change.

This study extends research on buyer firm roles in improving supplier sustainability practices by considering institutions – norms and rules – in the organisational field in which suppliers and sub-suppliers operate, exerting pressures on these actors to align their respectivepractices. We introducethe resource-based view to arrive at a framework outlining key capabilities for institutional entrepreneurs that seek institutionalisation of corporate sustainability standards (CSS) as a new institution across a multi-tier supply chain. The paper draws on the results of an exploratory research study using six comparative case studies within four industries. While institutional entrepreneurship explains how organisations drive institutional change, the resource-based view outlines criteria for organisational capabilities enabling the focal firm to achieve the targeted institutional change. Our analysis suggests five key capabilities enabling a buying firm to effectively institutionalise their requirements in multi-tier supply chains: (1) inter-firm dialogue, (2) risk management, (3) external stakeholder collaboration, (4) cross-functional integration, and (5) continuous improvement. The key organisational capabilities identified help to extend the theory of institutional entrepreneurship with concepts that facilitate institutional change in multi-tier supply chains with respect to corporate sustainability. This exploratory work opens up avenues of additional research in general and supply chain theory development.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of institutional entrepreneurship in opportunity formation and opportunity exploitation in developing emerging strategic new industries. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews the focal literature focussing on institutional entrepreneurs’ role in opportunity formation with special attention to opportunities for institutional entrepreneurs in emerging economy. A multi-method approach consisting of historical case studies and event sequencing is applied to track the historical development of the solar energy industry in two case contexts and to investigate the role of institutional entrepreneurs in this process. Findings – Investigation of two cases illustrates that different types of institutional entrepreneur, as represented by individual entrepreneurs and local government, in the context of massive institutional change – such as the Grand Western Development Program and the Thousand Talents Program in China – have varied effects on triggering and inducing institutional change and innovation to explore and exploit opportunities in emerging new industries. Practical implications – The significance of local context for the nature and scope of institutional entrepreneurship in emerging economy is worthy of further research. The top-down process of institutional innovation dominated by local government might cause myopic outcome and distortion of market opportunities. Indigenous individual entrepreneurs with well-accumulated political capital and strong perceived responsibility could be the main actors to introduce incremental institutional change by combining bottom-up and top-down processes and promoting sustained new industry development through creating and seizing institutional opportunities and market opportunities. Originality/value – This paper illustrates the close relationship between institutional environment and opportunity formation in emerging economies, contributes to the understanding of contextualizing institutional entrepreneurs in different regional contexts and discloses the problems involved in local government acting as an institutional entrepreneur.

The rapid institutional changes taking place today, including the emergence and global spread of new institutions bring to the fore the question of how new institutions develop. From the 1990s onwards, a new technical term has begun to spread in the literature: institutional entrepreneurship, reflecting the revaluation of people’s activity in institutional change. The aim of the paper is to answer the questions regarding this kind of entrepreneurship. How does institutional entrepreneurship emerge, how can we interpret and define this phenomenon? What kind of driving forces are behind it? How does it work in the real economy? The novelty of the paper is in addressing institutional entrepreneurship as the result of a special ability and activity of actors to combine different, already known elements for building up new institutions. The study introduces the characteristics of institutional entrepreneurship, using the example of the sharing economy, by contrasting sharing as an alternative to conventional market solutions. The paper also demonstrates how the institutional entrepreneurship of sharing changes its socio-economic environment, from mobilization of unused resources through perception of ownership to the increase of the growth potential of the economy.

Aportes teórico-conceptuales acerca del cambio organizacional de la industria cafetera colombiana

Hospital information system institutionalization processes in indonesian public, government-owned and privately owned hospitals

Neoinstitutional theory has relatively neglected the process of new practices evolving into protoinstitutions. As these are important elements in understanding institutional change, the paper utilises institutional theory and adopts a historical perspective to generate propositions by examining the genesis of a practice (socially responsible investment funds), with emergent and contrary logics, in an increasingly mature organisational field (financial services) with dominant logics. Apart from identifying the inus conditions that determine the success or failure of new practices, it is also illustrated that the process did not follow the existing generalisations on institutional change due to certain crucial factors, such as the nature of (and pressures exerted by) the incumbent institutions and logics, the nature of the new practice, and the presence (or absence) of certain events. Additionally, in mature organisational fields, the demolition of existing dominant logics and incumbent institutions so as to make room for the new logics and institutions is not easily achievable especially when a new practice differs from the incumbents on the basis of its driving logics. The unlikely institutional entrepreneurs use legitimisation strategies and a new practice is generally successful if its logics are congruent with the dominant logic. If not, the practice may undergo a period of dormancy. This can be circumvented by capitalising on exogenous events that favour the new practice.

In this paper we ask what is the place of institutional entrepreneurship in a (regional) innovation system. The main research questions addressed are (a) how does a new science-based concentration of innovation become institutionalized in an innovation system; (b) who are the institutional entrepreneurs and what do they actually do in their efforts to institutionalize new beliefs, practices, and activities within a system; and (c) what knowledge do institutional entrepreneurs need and what kind of power do they exercise in the institutionalization process. We add new knowledge to studies focusing on innovation systems by revealing how new elements are attached into it. We also add power and knowledge to the study of institutional entrepreneurship and institutional change. The empirical analysis identifies the main phases of institutionalization, key actors in different phases, and their strategies of influence. This paper is based on the analysis of secondary data and twenty-eight interviews with key actors.

The paper reviews the current discussion on institutional change and institutional entrepreneurship. Specifically, it focuses on institutional change agents, by which we mean individuals whose actions can be shown to have contributed to formal or informal institutional change, to the benefit of the wider economy or society as well as to themselves. It aims to explore their antecedents and behaviours, and the contingent factors contributing to institutional change, both intentionally and unintentionally. We find that the concept of institutional entrepreneurship does not provide an adequate conceptual underpinning for incorporating human agency into institutionalised theory. We therefore argue that a focus on institutional change agents may be more productive. Whilst institutional theory recognises the impact of institutions on entrepreneurs and individuals, this paper draws attention to the role of human agency for institutional change. Institutional change can happen intentionally and as an unintended by-product of entrepreneurial or organisational 'path-dependent' behaviour. The implication of this is that it is not only intentional behaviour which contributes to institutional change, but rather any entrepreneurial behaviour which implicitly or explicitly questions existing institutions. Thus, the paper adds to the current debate on institutional entrepreneurship.

Institutional Theory and Institutional Change: Introduction to the Special Research Forum

How are institutional logics transgressed in the organizational fields of open source software and of commercial proprietary software, respectively, by developing a new practice of commercial open source software? I argue that by combining a Critique of Ideology Critique and a Critique of New Institutional Organizational Theory, we become better equipped for understanding institutional change in organizations applying concepts such as institutional entrepreneurs, discursive devices, and meaning arenas. The analysis show that many institutional entrepreneurs apply discursive devices to convince actors in the two organizational fields of the legitimacy of the new practice. This happens in many different meaning arenas such as in the market, in the public discourse, and in concrete open source projects. I advance the assumption that a relation established between institutional entrepreneurs of different legitimacy in the two original fields renders possible their institutional work.

This chapter proposes a process model for understanding institutional change at the organizational field level of analysis. This process model consists of five overlapping stages of institutional change: (1) pressures for change; (2) the sources of new practices from institutional entrepreneurs; (3) the processes of deinstitutionalization and reinstitutionalization; (4) the dynamics of deinstitutionalization and reinstitutionalization; and (5) reinstitutionalization and stability. We see this process model as useful for integrating much of the literature on institutional change. While this literature has been criticized for its static focus on convergence toward similar and stable states, it has always included an interest in change, and we use the process model to indicate the specific contributions of existing studies.

Institutional theory offers a very powerful lens to understand and explain societal phenomena. In the context of innovation and technology, this perspective provides insights that complement the understandings derived from a focus on just technology or economics. Adopting this standpoint, this paper examines the emergence of the organizational field of open source software as a response to the norms of propriety software that were unacceptable to many passionate software researchers and programmers. The context of software product development has some unique characteristics that separates it from other industries. First, software products are information goods. In general, information goods have very high fixed costs of development and low marginal costs of reproduction which often leads to market inefficiencies. Second, IP protection has the potential to exaggerate the problem of market inefficiencies. Third, software is an input and also an output of the production function and IP protection has the potential to make the cost of software products prohibitively high. Fourth, the Internet has created the potential for the larger society to participate in the production process. These features of the software industry influence the dynamics among software professionals and orgnizations creating a distinctive context which can be better understood through the lens of institutional theory. According to institution theory, organizations seek to obtain legitimacy, which goes beyond technological or economic performance, by conforming to institutional requirements in a context. There are three forms of legitimacy. Pragmatic legitimacy, based on regulative requirements, is acquired by complying with the legal and regulative rules in the organizational field. Moral legitimacy, based on normative requirements, is obtained by ensuring that the activities of an organization promote societal good or welfare. Finally, cognitive legitimacy is derived from the extent to which the activities of an organization mesh with the taken-for-granted norms in the larger context. While institutions are normally sustained for long, they do experience change. Institutional change is driven by institutional entrepreneurs who create, maintain, and disrupt the practices that are considered legitimate, and challenge the boundaries that demarcate one field from another. The findings of this study capture the intricate dynamics and interactions among institutional requirements, software professionals and organizations that led to the norms of the institution of propriety software being challenged. It suggests that the process of institutional change can lead to the creation of a new alternate organizational field leaving the original field largely untouched. This paper contributes to the understanding of the software industry and suggests implications for other industries that produce information goods.