Institutional Evolution and Change: Environmentalism and the US Chemical Industry

Abstract

This paper empirically measures changes in the constituency of an organizational field centered around the issue of corporate environmentalism from 1960 to 1993, and correlates those changes with the evolving institutions adopted by the US chemical industry to interpret the issue. Four stages are identified, each representing a different field membership, interaction pattern and set of dominant institutions. The beginning of each stage is marked by the emergence of a triggering event. The article develops the ideas that: fields form around central issues, not markets or technologies; within fields, competing institutions may simultaneously exist within individual populations (or classes of constituencies); as institutions evolve, inter-connections between their regulative, normative and cognitive aspects can be detected, and; field level analyses can reveal the cultural and institutional origins of organizational impacts on the natural environment. The article concludes with future research challenges in understanding the dynamics by which events influence institutional change processes and the role of institutional entrepreneurs in channeling that influence.