Institutional entrepreneurs on opportunity formation and exploitation in strategic new industry

The world is facing challenges to reduce carbon emissions, the complex interplay between socioeconomic dynamics and environmental sustainability is of utmost importance. In the context of the BRICS nations-Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa-this study explores the intricate interactions between institutional entrepreneurship, institutional innovation, poverty reduction, social globalization, urbanization, and social entrepreneurship as well as their combined effects on the carbon footprint over the period of 1990 to 2021. This work examines the multi-dimensional interactions inside this nexus using a thorough analytical strategy that includes the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), Three-Stage Least Squares (3SLS), and Robust regression approaches. Institutional entrepreneurship and innovation are the main forces behind institutional change and may have an impact on how people behave in terms of the environment. Strategies for reducing poverty frequently involve greater resource usage, which has an impact on carbon footprint. Examining social globalization's impact on carbon footprints is necessary given how it affects consumer habits and economic activity. Rapid urbanization is a dual problem because it spurs both increased energy demand and novel sustainability measures. With its emphasis on community-driven solutions, social entrepreneurship can provide regional solutions to reduce poverty and carbon emissions. The study's findings provide policymakers, practitioners, and researchers with insights into the complex web of socio-economic factors that underlies carbon footprint fluctuations. This research paves the way for informed policy decisions, sustainable business practices, and the pursuit of harmonious development that addresses both economic aspirations and environmental imperatives within the BRICS countries by illuminating the connections between institutional entrepreneurship, innovation, poverty reduction, social globalization, urbanization, social entrepreneurship, and carbon emissions.

Purpose– This paper aims to investigate how sports science was institutionalised and rapidly deinstitutionalised within a Premier League football club. Institutional theory has been critiqued for its lack of responsiveness to change, but recent developments within institutional theory such as the focus on deinstitutionalisation as an explanation of change, the role of institutional entrepreneurs and the increasing interest in institutional work facilitate exploration of change within institutions.Design/methodology/approach– The authors deploy a longitudinal case study which ran from 2003-2011. Data was collected via observations, semi-structured interviews and through extensive literature reviews.Findings– Via this longitudinal case study, the authors illustrate that the antecedents of deinstitution can lie in the ways by which an institution is established. In doing so, they highlight the paradoxical role potentially played by institutional entrepreneurs in that they can (unwittingly) operate as agents of institutionalisation and deinstitutionalisation. Their study suggests that the higher the performance imperative within a field, the more likely the institution as a generic concept will be deinstitutionalised and the more likely to be appropriated and customised in order to gain inimitability and thus competitive advantage. Finally, the authors make an additional contribution by integrating the affective aspects of institutional work to their analyses; stressing the role played by emotions.Research limitations/implications– As with many case studies, the ability to generalise from one case, however detailed, is limited. However, it provides evidence as to the paradoxical role that can be played by institutional entrepreneurs – especially in highly competitive environments.Practical implications– The study suggests that the HR function has a potential role to play with regards to institutional continuity through a focus on leader and institutional entrepreneur succession planning.Originality/value– The paper makes an original contribution by highlighting both institutional and deinstitutional work within a single case. It highlights the paradoxical nature of institutional entrepreneurs in highly competitive environments and illustrates the importance of emotion to institutional maintenance and deinstitution.

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.

Due to the intertwined nature of private and public interests, local governments tend to use collaborative partnerships involving entrepreneurs to promote regional entrepreneurship. However, there is still a gap in the theory with regard to the mechanisms underpinning these collaborative partnerships. Drawing on the institutional entrepreneurship literature, we identify the enabling conditions and articulate the role played by local government as an institutional entrepreneur in fostering regional entrepreneurship through entrepreneurial public–private collaborative partnerships. This paper explicates two distinct mechanisms – the establishment of new institutional arrangements by the institutional entrepreneur and the advocation of diffusion by other actors – that underpin entrepreneurial public–private collaborative partnerships. Importantly, we underscore the crucial role played by returnee entrepreneurs who interact collaboratively with the institutional entrepreneur in affecting institutional change and fostering regional entrepreneurship. We conduct in‐depth qualitative interviews with local government officials, entrepreneurs and high‐tech park managers, in conjunction with performing content analysis of policy documents in a peripheral region of China – areas that have largely been neglected in scholarly research. This paper concludes with some theoretical and policy implications for public management and entrepreneurship.

This thesis is a report of a theory-driven approach designed to evaluate the role of ‘institutional entrepreneurs’ in developing adaptive not-for-profit healthcare organisations.Thesis aim and objectives:The aim of this thesis was to seek the program theories that describe how, why and under what circumstances institutional entrepreneurs might build adaptive not-for-profit healthcare organisations; to examine the strategies they use, under which circumstances they are used, the projected outcomes of those strategies, and the underlying mechanisms driving adaptive change.Methods:This thesis is a realist evaluation, which involved two parts: (1) a rapid realist review to develop initial program theories, and (2) a realist evaluation of a case study to test and refine those theories. Part 1 was a rapid realist review of the relevant literature supplemented by six rounds of Delphi discussions with an Expert Reference Group (n=8) over a period of approximately 10 months. This was followed by Part 2, a realist evaluation case study of not-for-profit disability service providers in Queensland preparing for a large-scale mandated reform— the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Data comprised of two rounds of realist, semi-structured interviews (n=39) and documentation review over a period of approximately 12 months.Findings:Eight program theories describing strategy-context-mechanism-outcome (SCMO) configurations were rigorously developed, tested and refined over the course of the study drawing on rich data. My contribution to the theory of institutional entrepreneurship and discourse of adaptive capacity is based on taking a forward-looking perspective. I provide strong evidence to demonstrate how the strategic work of institutional entrepreneurs before change can build adaptive organisations, thereby ensuring that organisations are ready to respond to disturbances in the field. The study’s final findings are presented under the themes of 1) Emergence, 2) Execution, and 3) Engagement, to show how such strategic work ensures that not-for-profits exhibit appropriate adaptive characteristics, including openness to change, learning, social networks, innovation, and collective leadership. Institutional entrepreneurs’ structural and content legitimacy are important, and can foster greater support and trust from staff towards new institutional logics and the legitimacy of change itself. Skilful rhetoric can overcome conditions of coercive pressure, institutionalised practices, and ongoing changes in the field by influencing individuals’ perceptions of adaptive change. The extent to which adaptive capacity penetrates into the culture of the organisation depends on the network of groups and individuals involved in its promotion.Conclusions:Addressing a need for greater adaptability in not-for-profit healthcare organisations, this thesis highlights the important role of institutional entrepreneurship to this area of inquiry. Practical implications can be drawn from the theoretical propositions uncovered in this thesis, regarding the use of strategies by institutional entrepreneurs wishing to prepare their organisations for ongoing change in the not-for-profit healthcare sector. The realist approach to inquiry has offered more useful focus areas for developing adaptive capacity, in that institutional entrepreneurs can make informed decisions based on the findings about what is likely to “work” in their unique situation. Organisational structure, historical factors, and the motivations and interactions of staff are factors that need to be taken into consideration in adaptive capacity building efforts.

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.

Purpose– Mass retail in France, as an organizational field, experienced an institutional change when the Dutreil Law was promulgated on August 2, 2005. This new text is the result of a long process through which different groups of opposing logics faced one another. Michel-Edouard Leclerc actively took part in the debate launched about the Galland Law reform. His institutional activism has contributed to this change and he can be qualified, on that account, as an institutional entrepreneur. Anchored in neo-institutional theory, this article contributes to understanding the part played by the institutional entrepreneur in the process of institutional change. Design/methodology/approachDesign/methodology/approach– The authors analyze Michel-Edouard Leclerc's discourse on his weblog to characterize the rhetorical strategies he adopts to legitimize change. The analysis is based on the works of the pragmatics of communication and on a detailed semantic analysis of reference fields (TropesFindings– This contribution has enabled the author to stress the part of the institutional entrepreneur in the transformation of an organizational field. The rhetorical strategies implemented here contribute to modifying institutional logic. From a theoretical point of view, this contribution links the neo-institutional approach with entrepreneurship by proposing to define the institutional entrepreneur as an actor pursuing political opportunities.Originality/value– One important advantage of this work is that the authors have offered a methodological framework for studying the discourse of institutional entrepreneurs. The paper proposes empirical operationalization of rhetorical strategies. This contributes to improving the validity of the research because the identification of rhetorical strategies is no longer exclusively related to the researcher's subjective interpretation. The work also has practical implications for the actors: how can their discourse play a part in the institutionalization process?

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.

Our purpose in this chapter is to demonstrate the value of Bourdieu’s theory of capital in explaining the agency of the individual institutional entrepreneur an emerging-market context, and explain how such agency can be framed from a social responsibility perspective. More specifically, we pose the following question: How do individual institutional entrepreneurs utilize different forms of capital in engaging in institutional entrepreneurship? Illustrative case studies have been used to address this question. The cases include social entrepreneurs in Brazil who fight racial inequalities and discrimination in different fields, including education, communications and work organizations. Transformation between different forms of capital that they utilize has emerged as the key process that facilitates institutional entrepreneurship in emerging-market contexts

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.

Legitimizing the apprenticeship practice in a distant environment: Institutional entrepreneurship through inter-organizational networks

Purpose– The aim of this paper is to propose an action-interaction-process framework to extend research on institutional entrepreneurship. The framework examines an actor's characteristics, interactions in an institutional context, and the process by which entrepreneurial action is accomplished.Design/methodology/approach– Via a sociohistorical archival method of narrative analysis, the action-interaction-process framework is applied to an exemplary case of institutional entrepreneurship – the case of James Meredith and the integrationist movement at the University of Mississippi in the 1960 s.Findings– The findings show that institutional entrepreneurs who maintain little power and influence over the institutional field must form strategic alliances to mobilize constituents and capitalize on the convergence of resources in the social setting.Practical implications– Through the process of collective action, institutional entrepreneurs can overcome resistance to change and displace inequitable institutional policies, while establishing new practices and norms.Originality/value– This research provides a stronger approach to examining institutional entrepreneurship and institutional entrepreneurs, the interaction between the institutional entrepreneur and the social context in which the individual operates, and the process by which inequitable institutionalized norms are reformed through collective action. This approach is useful to researchers examining institutional entrepreneurship or any area in which power disparity plays an important role.

The author critiques the existing literature on institutional change and points out that most of the work on institutional change and entrepreneurship is set in commercial fields where the guiding motive is competition and maximization of profits as against co-operation and sharing of resources that is at the core of institutional change in social arena. Issues such as injustice, inequity, and absence of fair play are significant concerns, which could spur the emergence of change agents, or social entrepreneurs, or champions to initiate action for change in a typical social arena such as an Indian rural community. Forwarding this argument and drawing from literature on social change, social entrepreneurship, and social movement, Patnaik extends the profiles of institutional change suggested by Dorado and posits an alternative profile of ‘social institutional change’ by addressing existing power asymmetries through the process of convening. The chapter defines institutional convening, the relationship between institutional convening and power, the role of institutional champion as an extension of DiMaggio’s ‘institutional entrepreneur’

The Evolution of Property Rights: A Study of the American West

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.