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

The impact of skills and training on local 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.

Multinationals’ political activity for institutional change: Evidence from Spain during the international crisis of 2008

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.

Multinational corporations are undeniably the driving force of globalization and regional economic integration. A convenient institutional framework (Hall and Soskice, 2001) to apply when comparing multinationals from different host countries is the well-travelled road of dividing capitalist economies into coordinated market economies (CMEs) and liberal market economies (LMEs). This article aims to elucidate the tensions between centralized human resources practices and labour union avoidance usually exhibited by multinationals from so-called Liberal Market Economies (LMEs) when they expand into coordinated ones (CMEs). Specifically, it examines the recent acquisition of the German retail giantGaleria Kaufhofby the Canadian multinational Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC).The article shows that HBC has settled into an uneasy acceptance of the CME institutions, while its investment motives vacillate between a long-term, market-enlargement strategy and a short- to medium-term one, based on the rapidly increasing real estate value of its downtown flagship stores. The article encourages researchers in IR to retain three principal conclusions for the literature and for further study. First, without predetermining outcomes by looking at host-country or home-country effects alone, institutionalist frameworks do present a convenient backdrop for conceptualizing movements of multinationals across jurisdictions. Secondly, concepts such as bricolage, recombining of institutional elements and institutional entrepreneurship, stemming from the institutional change literature, should routinely figure in one’s analytical toolbox, in any attempt at non-deterministic institutional analysis. Finally, sector-level actors, such as trade unions and employers’ associations, can play an essential role in any successful adaptation of collective bargaining institutions in the context of globalization by developing, maintaining and carefully utilizing their repertoire of strategic capabilities.

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.

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.

The chapter investigates a hitherto unexamined case of central bank mission creep: that of the National Bank of Hungary (MNB) under the leadership of Gyorgy Matolcsy after 2013. Based on the core ideas of the literature on institutional entrepreneurship and institutional change, a qualitative case study relying on elite interviews and document analysis is presented. This shows how and why the mission creep could stretch the Hungarian central bank’s policy portfolio beyond recognition in, inter alia, assuming development banking functions, buying commercial banks, purchasing real estate, creating research foundations and even university departments. These self-proclaimed ‘unorthodox’ measures reflected the long-held positions and institutional entrepreneurship of Matolcsy, a former minister for the economy. The case study offers new insights into the impact of institutional entrepreneurship on the medium-term evolution of economic policy institutions.

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

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.

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.

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?

PurposeThis study aims to explore how management control systems (MCS) compliment institutional entrepreneurship. It provides a case illustration of how the Vice Chancellor (VC) as an institutional entrepreneur used MCS to bring about a change in an Australian public sector university in anticipation of an externally imposed research assessment exercise.Design/methodology/approachThis case study gathered qualitative data through key informant interviews (including deputy VCs, research managers, executive deans and heads of departments) and a review of university and other electronic policy-related documents.FindingsThe study contributes to an understanding of the external environment that drives university leaders to become institutional entrepreneurs, and what they precisely do to facilitate the internal dynamic change in line with political demands.Research limitations/implicationsBeing a single case study, care should be taken in generalizing the findings. However, it raises significant issues that deserve further attention, for example, the impact of change on the working life of academics.Practical implicationsThe research study identifies the proposed imposition of a research assessment exercise as an enabling condition under which an institutional entrepreneur could promote and activate a new vision. It provides useful insights for other universities operating in the rapidly changing environment.Originality/valueIn identifying the way institutional entrepreneurs bring about change by promoting a vision and operationalizing it through MCS, the research study extends literature on institutional entrepreneurship MCS and organizational change.